Giving Back

How a Career in the Behavioral Health Field Helped Launch My Recovery

My first job in sobriety was as a server in a restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. I was not particularly good at it, nor was I motivated to improve. It was clear that food service wasn’t my calling. After a few weeks, I learned that a local youth wilderness therapy program was hiring field staff and I jumped at the opportunity. When they offered me a position for the summer, they must have been desperately short staffed. I was 23 years old, on an indefinite break from my bachelor’s degree, fresh out of rehab and still living in a halfway house. I did, however, possess one intangible quality that set me apart from the other instructor; I could relate to the clients.

I joined the staff of this program knowing exactly what it was like to be in a position where because of my behavior, my loved ones had no choice but to ship me off to the woods for several months. It was not hard to empathize; their story was my story. While I never disclosed my past to any of the kids, the unspoken language of our shared experience helped us forge a therapeutic alliance. Hardly any of the clients wanted to be at the program, but many of them begrudgingly admitted that I was trying to help.

While I will never know for sure if I actually helped anybody at that program, I do know what they did for me. In 12 step programs, members preach that service work is an essential component of recovery. According to the philosophy, self-centeredness is a core symptom of addiction and serving others treats the mental processes that underlies this behavior. Before I took that job, I might have made coffee and cleaned up at a meeting here and there. But volunteering a day or two a week came nowhere near the hundreds of hours of service that role required of me. It worked. For the first time in my life, I was set free of the urge to use and drink.

I could have probably chosen another career path that is easier and more lucrative than behavioral health. However, what I gain from sitting with people in their darkest hour is worth more than a high salary. By showing up at my job and doing my best to stay present, I am forced outside of myself in a way that makes it impossible to dwell on my own problems. After that first summer, I continued to work with at-risk youth while finishing my bachelor’s, entering a master’s program and pursuing clinical licensure. Slowly, the moments at work that temporarily freed me from self-centeredness began to bleed into other areas of my life. Before long, this new way of thinking became status quo. While this career path can be frustrating, stressful, thankless and even dangerous, I credit it as one of the reasons that I have remained abstinent. I am not sure if I could ever go back to doing something “normal”. Ironically, I’ve found that the work I do for who are struggling is a selfish act. While it may help them, it is an investment in my own recovery.