How Addiction Recovery and Growing from Grief Collide | Clarifying Podcast Recap
A subtle, but compelling, vision shift and a major push back against AI
Let me honestly admit something to you. I have used a Large Language Model to generate one of the posts that landed in your inbox and on the Chapter 3 Stigma page.
It felt gross and inauthentic. Yet, I justified it at the time.
But, I am coming around to a realization. I chose the more difficult path when it came to facing up with my addiction. I pursued honesty, progressed in the steps and sharpened my five recovery practices every day. I continue to choose this more difficult path intentionally every day I wake up.
We faced a similar, intentional, decision to journey along the more difficult path of faith, trust and healing after losing Lucy. Nihilism shadowed us everywhere we went, waiting for that moment when we might decide to hit the “easy” button and just be done with the more difficult path. But we refused.
I have wrestled with the question of ‘what’s the point of this body of work?’ often. As I’ll detail below, I had a conversation with a highly esteemed and accoladed doctor about addiction recovery, followed up by a conversation with my cousin about the loss of our daughters within a six month window of each other. Those conversations are selfishly interesting to me because they hit on my lived experience, but why do they matter beyond that?
And then it hit me.
All this exploring, pondering and creating that has happened in the couple years since starting Chapter 3 Stigma has been circling around something that I have never been able to clarify until now. It’s about the amplification of the human experience when we choose the more difficult path.
All of us are guaranteed to face hardships in this life. The highs are seemingly contractually obligated to be joined by difficult lows. And as difficult as all that oscillation is, there’s incredible beauty within that difficulty and impossible to predict opportunities for learning and growth we’re afforded when faced with these situations. At the end of the day, there’s hardly a more beautiful and compelling story than how we, as imperfect humans, can and have persevered.
I watch fear inducing content (generally AI generated) dominate people’s feeds and mental capacities. We’re filling our day numbing ourselves with onslaughts of the very worst and divisive aspects of us as a community and as individuals. We’re being trained to isolate, to hand over our time, ability to feel and critically think to others.
It seems we’re at a tipping point. Most of us, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not, will come to a crossroads soon. We either opt in to to easier path, one where we’re told what to think, how to feel, how to react and what to do. That path requires little effort, and it will numb you to death (I mean this literally).
Or, you can choose the more difficult path. You can sit with those uncomfortable human experiences and work to find the beauty that will likely lead you to an enriched connection with others as well as with God. To do so, you will actively and intentionally have to reject the easier path that will almost always be present.
That’s the point of this work. That’s the connection that all of this weird, unpredictable work seems to have pointed me towards.
So share this with someone you think might be at that crossroads. Do you opt in to the easy path? Or do you choose the harder path —* one that requires intentional action, discomfort, a helping hand from others and faith?
The choice is yours. The latest podcasts are linked below.
*deliberate choice of em-dash, mind you.
That got a little more serious than I expected. I originally intended to simply include links to the last two podcast episodes that dropped, but discovered I have been holding some thoughts in that I wanted to share.
If you’ve made it this far and feel compelled to do more, share this with others and give the podcast a ranking on your listening platform of choice. If you follow on Spotify, drop a comment on the episode page. All of this helps, as those weird, dangerous AI bots that we’re trying to push back against look for that type of interaction on the platform to boost content.
Stay wary, sit in the discomfort and keep enjoying this beautifully imperfect life that we all live.
Dr. Amy Swift: Chief Medical Officer at Silver Hill
Zach Tauscher: Cousin, Father Extraordinaire, Leader
All the best,
Kyle
🙏