EndGameNYC

Or maybe people who lost almost everything due to their drinking.

Labels are a necessary evil, one that allows us to communicate more effectively. Without them, we'd be forced to describe any particular category of being by what it looks like, what it does, and how it came to be, and then comparing it to other categories that it does not match. Small talk would be elevated to a lifelong conversation. Categorizing data, inserting labels, and then applying them where necessary is the way the human mind works. It's a type of shorthand that our minds naturally use so as to avoid writing a dissertation about everything and everyone we confront in reality.

For example, the term/label 'recovery website' would become "a place on the Internet where people talk about their struggles with addictions in different forums, where each person can start his or her own thread based on their personal issues, and where other people could respond with help, support, their own struggles, and then the thread continues until no one responds after a certain indeterminate amount of time, and where some people are still active in their addictions and others are in some stage of recovery, where you can be a friend or family member of someone who's struggling with addictions, where you can find methods and places that will help you with your addictions, where people celebrate their sober time and others talk about their spouses, where most people choose an avatar and an ID so that people will know who they are..." and on and on. Ordering a meal at a restaurant would be an eternal nightmare for everyone involved.

I've never had an issue with labels. It matters little to me what labels people use to describe me, whether those labels are positive or otherwise. I get that some people are sensitive to being labeled and that there is a stigma attached to many of the labels we use. It simply isn't an important enough or useful enough issue for me to either worry over or argue, for or against.

In all my years in active addiction and recovery, the many years I've spent in psychotherapy, the detox and rehab I was in, the ER visits due to my drinking, not once was I rejected for health insurance or life insurance, put at high risk for any kind of insurance, rejected for work because of my past medical history or even had a hint that any of these data were available to anyone besides me and the proper individuals and facilities.

When I struggle, the thing is to act, not ruminate over labels, descriptions and categories that have acquired surplus meaning because someone on the planet might find them objectionable.