In 2024, an estimated 48.4 million Americans aged 12 and older experienced a substance use disorder. Yet the figures tell only part of the story. Recovery requires a person to fight the forces that drove their addiction, rebuild their sense of self, and convince a world that remembers their worst moments to give them another chance.
How can we expect people to transform their lives if we have already decided who they are? I know what it means to be held hostage by my past. During my own recovery from addiction, one of the hardest battles was getting people to believe I could change.
In the beginning, believing in myself felt almost impossible. I needed other people to believe in me before I could do it for myself. Their faith became a kind of borrowed strength, giving me something to hold on to until I could stand on my own.
The damage of stigma runs deeper than a disapproving glance or a closed door. It can become the voice inside someone's head, repeating every accusation until shame starts to sound like truth. I spent too long assuming that other people saw me as worthless, then accepting their imagined judgment as proof that they were right.
Recovery forced me to confront an uncomfortable reality: sometimes, the person most determined to keep me trapped in my past was me. This realization did not arrive overnight. As I began working as a family nurse practitioner, I received reviews from people I helped.
At first, I dismissed their praise as kindness or pity. Then the reviews kept coming, thoughtful and specific, written by people whose judgment I had no reason to distrust. Eventually, I had to ask myself a question: why was I the only person insisting I had no value?
Extract — continue reading at the source.
