Why Does No One Care About Recovery Month?

New TSB pod w Joe Schrank. Luke O'Neil. Zachary Schomburg. Thich Nhat Hanh. More Pema.

The Small Bow is funded entirely through paying subscribers. We use your money to help pay for all our freelancers and Edith’s illustrations. September is the start of Recovery Month. Before we begin the usual Sunday issue, let’s talk about that.

I’ll tell you straight up it’s tough for me to be earnest about something like Recovery Month, but I’m gonna give it a whirl. Because I believe it’s meant to celebrate aliveness. Recovery is not only a willingness for some of us to stay above the dirt, but a genuine commitment to be a better version of a human while we’re here.

The list of ways to die from This Disease – which I was reluctant to call it that for most of my life, but I think it’s important to do so now – are innumerable: Heart explosions, liver rot, misadventure (as the Brits call it), hypoxeia, drunk driving, falling off a deck, jumping off a bridge, all sorts of cancers and cavernous sadness. Death is defied, until it’s not – and it’s on the loose out there right now.

So my one request for everyone reading this newsletter today is just to connect with the living and remember the recovering. Say thank you and I love you and I’m so glad you’re still here. Some days that’s all it takes. believe it’s meant to celebrate aliveness. If you love The Small Bow, a good way to celebrate is to send someone a TSB Gift Subscription. Or, you can just tell someone who is struggling they mean something to you.

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Our latest pod episode is up and out, and it features Joe Schrank, who many longtime TSB readers will recognize as our “in-house social worker and recovery expert.” He introduced me to Recovery Month in 2020, even though it’s been in existence since 1989. Its original intent was to recognize healthcare workers—rehab and addiction specialists, specifically—but it has since become focused on acknowledging anyone touched by recovery: alcoholics, mothers of heroin addicts, sober house managers, Recovery Dharma practitioners, gamblers, over-eaters, over-spenders, etc.

Joe’s major frustration is that, despite the millions of people struggling in America, Recovery Month has yet to be mainstreamed.

“It is September, and it is Recovery Month. Nobody gives a shit. And I very naively thought that the culture was going to get it by this point and there was going to be a solution.”

In the pod, we discuss some possible solutions, suggested ways of “celebrating,” and who’s been supportive of him over the years, most notably Andy Cohen from Watch What Happens L!ve.

We also discussed Matthew Perry and Robin Williams and whether a “Recovery Night” could ever occur at a Major League Baseball stadium.

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This week also marks TSB’s SIXTH birthday. (I know there are only five candles on the cake.) One of the most popular stories we had in our early days was written by Luke O’Neil of Welcome to Hell World.

“I used to think that drinking and doing drugs was taking me somewhere else. Not in the tripping sense I never did like those sorts of drugs but in the way that it summoned some part of me that lived inside and sent it out into the world to handle the logistics for me. A sort of publicist or travel agent that brought me places I wouldn’t have typically gone and handled the schmoozing. But that doesn’t last for long eventually it does the exact opposite, it sits you in your place. I drink on my back porch at night now alone mostly and my wife sits inside and sometimes she drinks there on the couch and my mother sits in her room watching TV and drinking and my stepfather sits in the other room drinking and none of us go anywhere.”

It still remains one of my favorites; beautifully gloomy and searching but also subtly hopeful.

Read the rest of the essay and my weekly recovery rundown after the jump.

Thanks for all your suppport!