Year Three: Is It Healing or Is It Content?
Note: This is speaking from my personal experience. If you don’t align with this, that’s ok! My words are not meant for everybody to resonate with 100%, unless you’re somehow a long lost twin. Then you should probably text me.
I am three years sober today. Or, at least, I’m three years sober by the time you’re reading this. And while I do recognize it as a huge accomplishment, it almost feels anticlimactic when it has become such an immersive part of daily life, particularly online presence. There comes a very meta experience when you’ve incorporated social media into your recovery journey. It’s almost like you need to take time to recover from Recovery Instagram, or at the very least discern how you want to navigate online and incorporate a deeply personal and vulnerable journey into a caption or podcast interview or, for some, even a brand. And after half a decade in Recovery Land, it almost takes on a life of its own.
Five years ago, I created another Instagram account separate from my personal one. It was originally named “RachelBradyLifts,” and I wanted to post gym selfies and document my post-graduation fitness journey without clogging up my personal feed. A few months before that, I had started to come to terms with getting sober. For personal context, I was in a new city solely for a new job (that took up most of my life,) living by myself in an apartment, doing long distance with my now-husband across the country, and essentially lived to work and workout. To be frank, it felt lonely as hell.
So bit by bit, I started to step my toe into writing about sobriety, trying to distance myself from “College Rachel,” as we’ll call her, and finding other sober accounts through various hashtags. Since it combined my fitness journey at the time, I decided to officially name my account “ShotsToShakes” as a nod from my transfer from taking shots to drinking protein shakes. At this point, recovering out loud seemed like the only way I could rectify the very public reputation of being a utter train wreck in college. I had seen how the media treats people in addiction like punchlines, and I myself had been mocked, ostracized, and shamed for being “wasted all the time,” “easy,” and, my personal favorite, “batshit crazy.” So, damn it, this was my way of reclaiming my narrative - if I was going to be perceived online, it might as well be on my terms, right?
It felt wonderful for a long time, not only because I was able to pour out thoughts that felt cooped up for years, but also because others responded positively to it. Perhaps it was because I tried to write from a redemptive lens, perhaps it was because I always tried to conclude posts with a neatly wrapped gift of a “lessons learned” as to not cause concern and to give an illusion of control, but it soon seemed like Recovery Instagram (as a whole, not as individuals) praised being “vulnerable” and “raw” and “transparent,” but there was this unspoken afterthought of “…but only if you keep it digestible and don’t make people uncomfortable.” I started to see recovery as the golden ticket in the quest for perfection and control, which ironically robbed me of the chance to hold space for mistakes and repair, be in touch with my humanity, and meet others where they’re at. To take it a step further, I was starting to paint a narrative that demonized “College Rachel,” not embracing her full self, and only narrowing her down to her darkest moments. I didn’t acknowledge her capacity to love, her wit, her kindness, her dedication. Only the parts that made her feel like a liability. If I couldn’t recognize her as a deeply hurt human, if there was this underlying resentment of striving for perfection, how in the hell was I going to hold myself through a deeply transformative and imperfect recovery?
It felt like I had locked myself in a box of curated content, unrealistic expectations, and a recovery persona that felt extremely performative, even in the moments where I did open up and bare my soul. There was this self-inflicted pressure to equate deeply personal life moments with content opportunity, and a sobering (pun intended) realization washed over: talking about recovery in the way that I was had replaced alcohol as my social currency. Logging on out of impulse had become an emotionally draining, almost business-like practice that felt contrived instead of filling. And while I did my best to pour my heart into my writing, my art, my connection, there was this ever present tug of, “What am I even saying anymore?”
Alluding back to replacing one dependence on another, being a voice in the recovery social media sphere had become a new sort of high - finally, I was receiving attention not for being a train wreck or a spectacle, but it was for being an “inspiration,” for doing something “right,” for being a “success story,” as if my story was a neat little before and after that could be commodified and put on a pedestal. Was it self-centered and self-serving? Honestly, upon further introspection, yes and no - it certainly wasn’t sustainable and put a lot of pressure to keep my recovery palatable. Even though it was incredibly validating, it was also sometimes dangerous. And as uncomfortable as it is to discuss, it led to buying into some pretty dogmatic and “let me save you” paradigms - this is nothing new in the mental health/recovery social media world. We’ve seen time and time again the dynamic of someone who claims to have the answers to your “broken” self and co-opts therapist language as a marketing tactic without providing an ounce of nuance or room for additional context. This is not to say that every single person in that realm is like this or has malicious intent, but it is undeniable that “Mental Health Awareness” Instagram has deeply problematic patterns that need to be actively challenged, especially by those who benefit from them, myself included.
Sometimes it can be easy to be constantly stimulated by content and not give yourself the chance to sit with and process it. And while I was soaking in new recovery lessons like a sponge, it almost felt like I was checking lessons off a task list and immediately asking, “what’s next?” It soon became blurry as to where my original thoughts began and what was being regurgitated time and time again. Even more, there became a fine line between speaking as a part of the recovery community and speaking for all the recovery community, even the parts that I personally did not experience nor take time to learn about. Because let’s call it for what it is - my experience as a middle-class, cishet white woman with fairly easy access to treatment and no criminal record didn't mean that I didn’t struggle and that I shouldn’t celebrate my recovery, but there are plenty of oversights and obstacles that I will simply never fully understand. This isn’t something to feel ashamed about or minimize my growth, but it is important to remember that one experience is a very small portion of the recovery umbrella and to take responsibility to be cognizant of that. We are not meant to be everything to everyone, and assuming that we can be is even harmful at times.
If you’ve read this far and part of you is going, “Damn Rachel, you’re really bumming me out. I love recovering on social media, and if it helps others, it’s worth it,” then fret not. I agree wholeheartedly that our accessibility to different communities and stories has saved countless lives and has given people the means to find hope in recovery. But it wasn’t the social media that helped buoy my recovery - it was the storytelling, it was learning about concepts and ideologies and service, it was getting my head out of my own ass and waking up to the world and being present for it.
I must also remember that social media in itself is literally designed to be a dopamine hit. Therefore, it can be understandable to feel almost incomplete if you don’t put your entire life online or feel like you’re “hiding something” if you make the choice to keep certain parts of your life private. It also can lead to quite a self-centered recovery lens that has you believe that one truth for you is a truth for all - it is one thing to discover your authenticity and tend to your values, it is another to place yourself on a pedestal and gatekeep how others navigate their recovery on a public platform. However, nobody is perfect, certainly not me. There have been many eras of ShotsToShakes - the “fitness wannabe influencer" era, the “angry at alcohol marketing all the time” era, the “why would anyone NOT want to be sober?” era, the “I’m having a writing identity crisis” era, the “question and overthink everything” era…and whatever this current era is.
The past two Sobirthdays, I created a post for each year highlighting the lessons learned from those times. As I reflect on this past year, the first word that comes to mind is “privacy.” Because, as I had mentioned before, I had spent a majority of my recovery in a public, almost (ugh, I’m not a fan of this word,) influencer-like lens that felt almost…unfair to my humanity. It felt like my online experience was getting more transactional than transformational, and the parasocial relationships were a cautionary tale into the entitlement we can sometimes feel when it comes to knowing the intimate details of someone’s personal life, even an online figure. As much as I value the virtual relationships made in recovery, I had to check myself - was I sharing for reasons that were best for me in that moment? Was I treating my account like a content-producing machine rather than a tool in processing insight? Who was I when I wasn’t producing? Was I even enjoying myself anymore?
With those reflections, taking longer breaks in between writings, and even admitting when projects were too much to take on or even not aligned with my values, these are three takeaways from Year 3:
Not everything is yours to resonate with, try to resolve, or involve/center yourself in. As I’ve mentioned previously, recovery and mental health social media can be a double edged sword - it creates momentum that fosters connection, opens doors to professional insight and lived experience that you may have not have access to in real life, and provides solace if you just need to know that you’re not the only one feeling this way. It also can invite misused pathologising, the pressure to monetize everything, and unnecessary centering and speaking over. We strive to find meaning, yet it is simply unrealistic to assume that every post that comes through our feed is meant to align 100% with our background, our identities, and our present situation. There is a difference, I believe, between being inclusive in our work and expecting everyone to agree with us.
Demonizing your past self limits your capacity to show up for others who may still identify with that past self. For a long time, especially the first year of recovery, my main priority was distancing myself as much as possible from “College Rachel.” I would post before and afters like a badge of honor, trying to find the most dramatic, drunk looking, sad looking photos from my college years when I was both struggling with my drinking and my weight. I wanted to showcase this incredible transformation, which I did have, but the longer that I focused on this, the more I realized that I was trying to paint this picture of my past self that was extremely resentful. It was almost as if I had created a caricature of myself to throw tomatoes at and use as something to take my anger out on. This year, this sort of realization came over me as I noticed that there can be a dangerous pattern of mistaking sobriety for superiority. I had seen so many posts, some that I will admittedly created as well, that painted sobriety as the one and only true path towards wellness, fullness, being in touch with yourself. Although I said that it wasn’t the case, there were strong savior undertones in my writing, almost like I was trying to convince myself just as much as others that sobriety was the "better" way. Learning more about harm reduction this year was a huge contributor to a shift in mindset when it came to meeting others where they’re at, and not automatically assuming that one path is best for everybody. Besides, how would it feel if “College Rachel” came upon the posts I was making, with herself as the “before” picture, and me talking about how sad, and broken, and disastrous I was? How could she possibly look at that and say, “Yes, I want to go to HER with my most vulnerable moments?” It honestly was an extremely humbling year, and a lesson in duality - being able to look at my past with compassion and also know that it is not where I want to live anymore.
Your boundaries are everything, especially in a virtual world that mistakes accessibility for availability. This year was, without a doubt, my most private year when it came to my recovery. Although I had discussed boundaries on ShotsToShakes many, many times, this seemed to be the time where I became more grounded in them and discovered what did (and didn’t) bring me peace online. This was especially vital when content would go viral and drew many eyes onto the account, even eyes that clearly were only here to bring harm. Although I didn’t share it at the time, I even received my first slew of death threats after some of my Reels gained millions of views, and it was time to get serious on recognizing that social media was affecting my mental health. After all, having an anxiety attack before checking my phone or even being away from it for a set period of time was not healthy. Some tactics I enforced this past year included limiting comments to people who followed me, clearly stating that I was not accepting sales messages in my Instagram bio, and being realistic with what I could take on, even if that meant taking time offline for extended periods of time (and not feeling guilty for that.) What does this have to do with recovery, you may ask? It slowly brought back my account to its intended purpose - a collection of writings and sharing resources to advocate for the recovering. I’m sure many of you can relate to the incredibly insidious way that social media can enmesh with how you perceive yourself, define yourself, and hold yourself accountable. It’s important to check in with ourselves when it comes to our social media use, how it’s affecting our mental health, and to adjust accordingly if we feel like our privacy and boundaries are being crossed and/or if we’re clearly communicating what we will and won’t tolerate.
As I write this out, the best way I can describe my current state is…grounded. I want to sincerely thank every single person who has been along for this ride, the recovery friends who continue to teach myself and others, and those in my personal life who are the epitome of patience and compassion. It is a good day to be sober. As always, grateful to be here.
With Love,
Rachel