What Surrounds Us

I was sitting in a recovery group with a small group of boys, listening to an AA speaker, when something the speaker said made me pause and reach for a marker.

The boys were engaged and active in the conversation, the way that only happens when something real is being said. The speaker was talking about what drives us, what pulls us forward or holds us back, and I felt something click. I wrote one word in the center of the whiteboard and they all looked up. 

Me.

I should mention that "me" is perhaps a teenager's favorite topic, and it grabbed their attention.

I turned to them and asked a simple question. During your addiction, what surrounded you? What were the things that mattered most? What drove you every single day?

They didn't hesitate. Social status. Friends. Drugs. Sex. Money. Chaos. The answers came quickly, honestly, without embarrassment. I wrote each one around the word "me" until the board looked like a map of a world most of us spend years trying to leave behind. Then I asked them to look at it.

That, I said, is what surrounded you. Those are the things that supported your addiction. Those are the things that drove it.

Nobody argued. Nobody looked away. They recognized it.

Then I drew a second circle. Same center. Same word.

Me.

This time I asked a different question. In recovery, what surrounds you now? What are the things that matter? What do you want driving you forward?

The answers shifted. Relationships. Family. Support system. Goals. Hope. Most of the words were different. And then one of the boys paused and asked a question that stopped the room.

What about sex? It was on both boards. What's the difference?

It was not a joke. It was one of the most honest questions I have heard in a long time, and it deserved a real answer.

We talked about how the same word can mean entirely different things depending on what surrounds it, what drives it, what it is connected to. In addiction, sex can sometimes become impulsive or transactional, a way to fill a void, something physical that leaves people feeling emptier afterward. In recovery, intimacy and connection can be part of something built on trust and genuine relationship. Same word. Completely different world.

Those two circles are not only theirs. They belong to you too.

Think about yourself during your child's active addiction. Draw your own circle. Write your word in the center. Now think about what surrounded you. Fear. Isolation. Shame. Chaos. Exhaustion. The sleepless nights. The phone you never put down because you were afraid of what the next call might bring. The way you stopped making plans because you never knew what the day would hold. The endless cycle of hope and devastation that became the rhythm of your days.

Those things drove you too, in ways you may still be sorting through. There is no judgment in that. It is simply what addiction does to everyone it touches.

Now draw another circle. As recovery enters your child's life, and your own, think about what begins to replace it. The support of others on a similar path who understand in ways no one else can. The hope that starts out fragile, almost too small to trust, and slowly becomes something you can actually hold onto. Relationships that begin to rebuild. A future that looks more promising than the one you feared was the only possibility. The circles change for all of us. That is the whole point.

What surrounds us changes everything.

These boys are doing that work. They named their old world clearly, without flinching. And then they named the new one they are building. Goals. Family. Hope. I watched them as they said those words. There was no performance in it. They were not telling me what I wanted to hear. They were telling each other, and themselves, what they were reaching for. Those words did not come from a worksheet or a prompt. They came from somewhere real.

I was proud of them in that moment. Not because they gave the right answers, but because they understood the question. They could see the distance between where they had been and where they were going, and they were willing to do the hard work of closing that gap.

Recovery is not just about what we walk away from. It is about what we build around ourselves in its place.

I have been thinking about that boy's question ever since. Not because it was surprising, but because it was brave. He was not trying to be funny. He was asking it in a room full of people who understood, people he trusted. He was trying to understand his own life. That is what recovery looks like at its best. A teenager asking the question out loud, and a trusted adult willing to answer it honestly.