I went to a different type of recovery meeting tonight. It is for sober members that are depressed and/or have other types of mental illness.

(The meeting is kept highly confidential lest the others discover us that have to take meds to help with our derelictions other than alcoholism.)

In some (emphasis on some, not all) circles of recovery, it is frowned upon to take antidepressants, or pain medications even for surgery.

If you are unaware of recovery meetings, I ask you not to get the wrong idea about recovery, and the possibility that it is a terrible place in which people tell you how to live your life.

Recovery rooms are very much like real life, they include the general population that many of us avoid. You can find total acceptance and unconditional love in recovery rooms, you can take what you want and leave the rest.

Again, the rooms are inhabited by mere humans. The main object is for you to find a power greater than you are and whatever that power may be; you get to decide exclusively for yourself.

This meeting is a little different from most I attend. In that, you can safely discuss other mental health issues without losing sight of being an alcoholic.

I was impressed with the content of the meeting and the acknowledgement of mental illness being a worse stigma than being an addict/alcoholic. I knew this in my head but it wasn’t in perspective.

It is an alarming suggestion to me that mental illness is in fact, a bigger shortcoming than alcoholism. As if, our derelictions are in competition with one another.

People that are not educated; think that mental illness is something people can just shake off, or that they can just pull themselves up by their boot straps and stop whining already. That certainly sounds easy enough. If it were that easy, I am guessing that no one would ever commit suicide ever again.

Even larger is that mental illness and addictions have haunted humans for centuries. One would think in all of that time and with all of the lives lost, acceptance and education would have had a bigger saturation impact.

People with mental illness desire permission to speak their truth, to be accepted, and loved. We will get better. Once we begin to get better, we can pass it on. Passing it on will help ease the shame of those that will come after us.

By passing it on, someone will realize they do not have to live another day in bondage of shame and sorrow, and seek the help they need. We won’t have to hide in top secret locations or to write anonymously lest we be found out.

Our big secret is simply that we are trying to manage our mental illness with medications and other human support so we can get better.