This Q&A series features the unique stories of individuals who are part of this community, exploring their journeys into recovery and experience with Recovery 2.0.
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What brought you into recovery?
By the time I was in 7th grade, I was drinking in the morning. In high school, I started smoking cigarettes and weed. Harder drugs entered the picture in college. I knew alcohol was a problem, but my addiction to cocaine really bothered my soul. Using it helped me avoid blacking out, but coke also opened the door to me getting into narcissistic and abusive relationships.
I was always a spiritual seeker. At 22, I joined a religious mission group to get away from a violent relationship and spent a year abroad without drinking or using. I thought I could come back and drink responsibly, and immediately I was doing coke again. I finally got sober for good when I was 24 years old. I’m 43 now, so that was 19 years ago.
Joining Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was a huge awakening. I found community and was accepted for who I was. The same day I went to my first AA meeting I also went to my first yoga class. And that became a routine, where I would practice yoga and then go to an AA meeting and talk it out. Those two things were always side-by-side but sort of lived in separate houses.
How did you find out about Recovery 2.0?
I’d been sober for 8 years and had become certified as a yoga teacher. I was exploring natural medicine and nutrition and I’d gone through the Yoga of 12-step Recovery teacher training with Nikki Myers. But I was still really struggling with my addictions to nicotine and unhealthy relationships. In 2014, I attended a yoga, meditation and recovery retreat at Kirpalu and that’s where I met Tommy.
He spoke about the frequency of addiction and that immediately resonated with me. He introduced me to the practice of kundalini yoga. He spoke about freedom from addiction and once I heard that I couldn’t unhear it.
I went back to his retreat at Kirpalu every year and took his coaching in between. Through his lectures and teaching and the other incredible teachers he brought in, I was able to start addressing codependency for the first time. In 2018, I went on a Recovery 2.0 retreat and that’s when I got really immersed and decided to join the team. I completed the Recovery 2.0 Coach Training the following year.
What do you love most about R20?
It’s a really uplifted community that is committed to true healing and ending addiction. In AA there is this generally accepted idea that believing you are well or healed puts you in a precarious position for relapse. That has, unfortunately, created a culture of sickness, where you are not just allowed to stay sick but you are encouraged to do so and to create belonging around that belief.
In AA, you are often ending the alcohol problem but allowed to remain addicted in a whole slew of other ways – including activities that are categorized as healthy. You see the ones who are riding their bikes 30 miles a day and their energy is aggressive and extreme. Or there are people on the opposite end of the spectrum who have severe food addiction or codependency, sponsoring everyone and causing so much harm from their lack of awareness and need to control.
I love that in Recovery 2.0 we can all come under one roof regardless of what we’re struggling with. You can be the most extreme example of somebody who has suffered from addiction or you can be someone who is just eating too much sugar. If somebody comes in and says they’re 14 days off sugar, I’m like, that is so badass! It really is a community that cares deeply about the wellbeing of others and celebrates all of their success.
How does sponsorship work in Recovery 2.0?
We’re still a young program, so finding sponsorship can be a little difficult. But at every universal online recovery meeting, we ask people to raise their hands if they’re willing to sponsor. And, of course, people can always find sponsors at our in-person retreats.
There are plenty of people in our community with long-term recovery. And if they’ve been through the 12 Steps, they can take someone through the 12 Efforts of Recovery 2.0, which have been adapted from the original 12 Steps with the goal of increasing accessibility.
When people come to Recovery 2.0 that are brand new to recovery, they’re often encouraged to attend a local 12-step meeting focused on their primary addiction and find a conscious, uplifted sponsor who can take them through the steps and get it done that way.
What jobs have you had as part of the Recovery 2.0 team?
When I first started working for Tommy in 2019 it was very much part-time, and I was the director of journeys – focused on the retreats he was leading in India, Costa Rica, Joshua Tree, Telluride, England and other places across the country. Next year we’ll be hosting our first retreat in Greece, which I’m very excited about.
Then Covid hit and everything in-person shut down. That’s when we really started our online meetings and I helped lead that effort. Now I’m involved in welcoming and supporting new members, so when someone signs up they’ll get an email from me. My last name is Welcome, so I’m taking it as a sign that I’m on the right path.
What is your aspiration for this work?
I really want to see Recovery 2.0 become a well-known community. Tommy would continue being the senior teacher, but I’d love to see our community really empowered to support itself and its growth. That would include more in-person meetings and gatherings, and I think the new app is going to help make that much easier to do.
There are some organizational things that need to happen to support the continued growth of Recovery 2.0. We’ve been around for about 12 years, and the 12 Traditions of AA were created and first published a little over 10 years after AA’s founding. So I think we’re at an exciting inflection point where some of that foundational work gets done.
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