Writing About Addiction and Recovery Bonnie E. Carlson

I didn’t start out with the intention of becoming someone who writes about alcoholism and addiction. Or maybe I did. This essay contributes to the body of work on writing about difficult things (see “Why and How I Write Novels about Tough Subjects” by Ellen Marie Wiseman on this site) such as mental illness (e.g., see the well-reviewed memoir, The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang).

Apparently, our appetite for addiction/recovery stories is (almost) limitless. Recently, The New York Times reviewed a raft of new addiction memoirs and wrote a story on Ben Affleck’s longstanding alcoholism and recovery (the most read article that day) that mentions nine other celebrities who have openly struggled with sobriety. I love that the words “shame,” “raw” and “vulnerable” appear in the story.

When I started my debut novel six years ago as I retired from an academic career unrelated to writing (except that it required writing and publication of scholarly material), a story roiled in my head and screamed to get itself down on paper. It kept me awake at night. I knew little about writing fiction beyond have read a zillion novels over my then sixty-five years. How hard could it be? 

Little did I know. Getting creative writing published turned out to be much more difficult than getting articles published in selective scholarly journals. If I’d had any clue how hard it was to get published, I never would’ve even started. So, in my case, ignorance was bliss. 

Retirement allowed me to be “out” about being a recovering alcoholic on my website and blog without fear of being stigmatized at work. It felt both dangerous and liberating. I devoured books about writing fiction and attended online and in-person writing workshops. I found critique partners.

When I began, I hadn’t heard yet that one should write from one’s lived experience. Thankfully (okay, this sounds weird), alcoholism and recovery were my lived experience. 

Although plenty of memoirs about women’s paths to sobriety have been written (e.g., Mary Karr’s Lit, Sarah Hepola’s Blackout, and Leslie Jamieson’s The Recovering), I could find few novels about getting sober. I wanted mine to be an account of why it’s so hard to stop drinking. Radical Acceptance is one woman’s story (not my own) about finally getting sober. As I reworked my novel over several years, my intentions for it changed. We know from the stigma that remains for addicts and alcoholics, fueled by the opioid epidemic, that many people who haven’t struggled with substance abuse don’t understand the nature of addiction. Over and over we hear, “Just stop.” As if it were that easy. It’s hard for people who have never grappled with a compulsion to do something self-destructive to understand how hard it is to stop. Addiction alters one’s brain, although healing is possible with time.

When I reveal that I’m a writer, that I’ve written a novel, people usually want to know what it’s about. When that person doesn’t identify as someone in recovery, or is a stranger, I feel uncomfortable as I tell them it’s the story of Laurel, who can’t stop drinking, who gets a third DUI, who ends up incarcerated. It’s a nightmare to leave prison as an ex-offender with a felony record and get back on your feet—while trying not to drink. Without support it’s next to impossible. I wanted to show what that’s like, because it’s an experience most people have a hard time imagining.

As I got closer to completing Radical Acceptance, thinking about publishing and marketing, I thought more about its intended audience. Women, of course, people in recovery, and readers grappling with their own drinking or drug use. But I hoped it would resonate with anyone, especially women, who had struggled to stop an unhealthy behavior such as overeating or indiscriminate sex. Because don’t most people engage in some kind of behavior they know is not good for them?

One subplot in my current work-in-progress also involves addiction. A college student loses both parents tragically, harbors a secret that undermines her self-esteem, and has a drinking problem. When a sexual assault sends her life careening downhill, she ends up addicted to heroin. A “nice girl” from a “good family.” My fervent hope is that my writing will be so effective that readers will empathize with messed up Chloe, even as she makes terrible decisions about her life. 

It’s challenging to write about deeply flawed characters who make one bad decision after another in a way that resonates with readers. And people who are deep into their alcoholism or addiction, whom we watch crash and burn, are deeply flawed. I had a couple of early readers, themselves in recovery, ask me why they should care about Laurel. Although that question deeply wounded me, it was important, and I appreciated that they asked it. Then I had to get to work on that character, building in traits that readers could identify with and admire before she started to self-destruct.

When Laurel picks up a drink before an important and mandatory work party she dreads, I can hear readers moan, “oh no, this can’t end well.” And it doesn’t. In my work-in-progress, when Chloe seeks out a dodgy prescription for opiate medication after a traumatic experience, readers know that she’s destined to go down a dangerous rabbit hole.

So, here’s why I feel compelled to tell stories of addiction and recovery, beyond the simple joy of telling stories: first, I hope that readers who have struggled with these issues will see themselves and feel validated; and second, hopefully some readers who have trouble understanding how someone gets addicted (and why they can’t just stop) will finally get it.

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Bonnie E. Carlson retired from an academic career in social work. Now she writes amidst the saguaros and chollas in the magnificent Sonoran Desert. She has published stories in magazines such as The Broadkill Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Across the Margin, Anti-Heroin Chic, and The Normal School. Her novel Radical Acceptance will be out this month and a short story collection, No Strangers to Pain is forthcoming in late 2020.

Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/carlson_bonnie

Find out more about her on her website http://www.bonniecarlsonauthor.com/

Radical Acceptance

One poor decision can tank everything. Middle-aged Laurel Peterson has struggled for a lifetime to overcome her damaging childhood. She’s managing quite well as a successful graphic artist in Scottsdale, Arizona, when life comes crashing down. She decides to indulge in just one drink to take the edge off, but a third DUI rips away everything she’s worked to build.

She finds herself in the infamous Tent City jail in the scorching Arizona desert, pending a subsequent prison sentence. Laurel, determined to fight her demons, scrabbles to make real changes in her life and become sober once and for all. But, can she… with her sister’s murder, an ungrateful mother battling Parkinson’s Disease, and the stakes ratcheting upward when she’s contacted by a son she abandoned nineteen years before?

Link to the book:  https://adelaidebooks.org/radical%20acceptance.html

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