Too Young to Recover?

The recovery month of September is upon us again, a chance for all recovering people to celebrate their new way of life. Amongst those celebrating is an increasing number of young people who recognise that their negative experiences with substances and/or behaviours require meaningful and consistent changes in their lives.

In my role as Programme Manager at Better Than Well, a campus recovery programme at University of Birmingham, I frequently meet such young adults. They are an inspiring bunch and every day, I can see the growth of a solution in their lives that unfortunately was not my experience.

I am not a young person. I am one of those weathered Gen Xers, a casualty of the 90s, you might say. Addiction for me began when I was 10, as I engaged in behaviours around food and fantasy - compulsive, secretive, anxious and linked to a restless dysphoria. I was unable to express or even explain this evolving malady. Isolated from others with a distracted dreaminess taken for dimness or indolence by teachers, a kind of shame started to emerge in my inner life. When I discovered mind-altering substances aged 12, I found something to feed my curiosity, ease my restlessness and offer temporary cessation from feelings of otherness and shame.

Attached to these substances was a counter cultural identity offering a tribe, connectedness and even a soundtrack to my complex emergent emotions. It’s worth noting that one of these substances was a prescribed drug, Diazepam, given to my Grandad who lived with us to treat his alcoholism. I now feel a connection to him – a young man with feelings like my own that led him to this pharmacological fix.

By the age of 14, I found myself dependent on a cocktail of alcohol, amphetamines, cannabis and benzodiazepines - at odds with a system that seemed unwilling or unable to reach me, and labelled ‘delinquent’ rather than ‘neurodivergent’. Others like me fell between the gaps of an education system built on Victorian foundations and I ended up in a specialist unit for children with behavioural problems.

My addiction thrived in this environment. Some kind people tried to understand me - listening and offering advice. But not once did I meet another who had been through what I had and escaped this seemingly hopeless state. As my addiction progressed, I felt it was just accepted that I was a ‘problem’ and I felt ‘written off’.

As I grew despondent and began to accept my lot, unbeknownst to me there were people recovering from what I suffered from - sharing a language of hope, faith and courage never offered to me. I have since tried to understand why recovery was not on offer at these crucial times. Through my studies and experience of recovery communities, a picture has begun to emerge of public policy and a general acceptance that addiction and dependency is not diagnosable until adulthood. This is undoubtedly backed by complex institutional and political mechanisms. The same is true of recovery fellowships, which fail to capture the experience of young people and the dimensions of their emerging addictions. There is a general reluctance to take seriously what young people are saying about their problems with substances and behaviours.

If I had the chance to talk about how I used substances and behaviours with someone with similar experiences, it would have planted a seed that may have come to fruition far earlier. It may have set me on a course towards recovery and arrested the self-stigma that became a malignant schematic psychological trait keeping me isolated and afraid for decades.

The most powerful thing about Better Than Well is opening that dialogue with young people about their emerging addictions, taking seriously and compassionately what they are saying; connecting them to others who found a solution to their problems. Given time and respect to explain themselves, young people can assess the impact their behaviours and misuse of substances are likely to have on their lives. All this requires is the trust of policymakers to let young people co-design and create communities and spaces where they can communicate their own experiences without the stifling surveillance of a ‘treatment system’ based on risk.

Now more than ever is the time to take this seriously. Latest government statistics show an increasing trend in addiction amongst young people, particularly with substances like cocaine, ketamine and solvents. This data is unlikely to be capturing the true extent of the rising trend due to the limited way that we collect data on young people in the UK.

Treatment of addiction for young people in the UK has suffered severe cuts as part of ideological austerity measures. Remaining services for adults are not suitable or relevant for many young adults at a time when their future is uncertain. Following the Covid 19 lockdown, this generation of young people is ever more disconnected from the communities around them, retreating into an often cruel, unusual and unregulated digital world. Fertile ground for a rise in addictions in the future.

At Better Than Well we have seen more students connecting with us about behavioural addictions, often linked to digital technology - web-based pornography, digital gaming and online gambling – where research on approaching these issues is scant. Recovery is something young people crave - for our members, a sense of community is the most attractive thing about our project. Students feel empowered by our programme because they it was co-designed and created by people like themselves.

Recovery and education have similar aims – namely promoting a healthy, productive, and meaningful life. For many people, their addiction emerged during adolescence and emerging adulthood, often whilst at university. Introducing people to recovery whilst at university has real relevance and definite benefits.

Unfortunately, my own addiction kept me isolated and unwell for decades. I didn’t go to university until I was 37, when I came into recovery. Had recovery and education been linked, my life may have been very different. The work I do today is about righting those wrongs for future generations struggling with addiction, so that they can imagine a future where they are better than well.