I Did The Recovery Wrong: My Personal Recovery Journey

October 26, 2026

Lauren Flynn, Author, Songwriter, Vocalist, and Rhythm Guitarist 

John Makohen, Subject Matter Expert

🧭 This personal account discusses trauma, exploitation, substance use, and cannabis. It describes one recovery pathway, not instructions to follow.

KEY POINTS

Lauren Flynn’s personal recovery journey includes therapy, stand-up comedy, music, boundaries, and putting down roots.

She describes leaving settings and relationships that did not feel safe or supportive to her.

Her choices differed from some advice she received; she explicitly presents experience rather than a rejection of established recovery methods.

Her account of quitting substances abruptly and later using cannabis as harm reduction is the pathway to recovery that worked for her.

Finding My Own Way Through a Personal Recovery Journey

I did the recovery wrong. And that might be why I'm here today, writing about it. I didn't go to AA or NA or rehab. I went to Santa Monica. And I signed up for a 5-week stand-up comedy workshop. Technically, I did go to AA. And NA and CA. And I did go to rehab way back when I was 15, after my parents found a bag of pot in my bedroom and called the cops. 

Decades later, in 2018, after about a month of sobriety, I tried a handful of meetings across the greater Los Angeles area and felt unsafe. There was an uncomfortable social pressure within the group that I couldn't quite put my finger on, but more than that were a few different men who engaged in the practice of 13th stepping — veterans of sobriety descending on vulnerable newcomers for a romantic/sexual relationship. I'd had enough of that in my life and was sober enough to recognize it finally.

I managed my first thirty days of sobriety in my adult life alone. It's worth noting that my substance abuse was not to the point that I needed medical intervention to quit safely. But I needed to quit. 

After a lifetime of trauma topped off by a string of natural disasters, I had come to rely heavily on drinking and chain-smoking to deal with my own internal hellscape, largely because I was too busy trying to stay afloat while being knocked down that therapy and other mental health services or even a vacation were a distant dream. Things changed after I lost everything in my second wildfire, and FEMA provided 24 one-hour sessions with a therapist. With support from donations, I was able to buy time away from work to tend to my now overwhelming trauma. I was living in Santa Barbara at the time, and the therapist options were top-notch. The rest of my life was a mess: a daily scramble for housing, sifting through donations to restock my life, slowly dropping out of my physics program as my brain turned to mush. But I showed up like clockwork every week to my therapy sessions, where I was introduced to EMDR and boundaries.

The Band

Fast forward six years. I was displaced again by a natural disaster after moving back to Colorado—this time a flood—and with no belongings, a sense of hopelessness, and a bunch of songs, I moved back to Los Angeles. I quickly acquired other musicians and started playing venues and festivals. Behind the scenes, I was moving through life like a freight train fueled by whiskey and, eventually, cocaine. My once-or-twice-a-year stimulant "treat" had become a regular part of the fast-paced landscape, and when my dad died 5 months before I got sober, I went off the deep end. 

During those five months, I knew I needed help. I'd known for years. I was buried in journals with pages of years of disordered writing, a lot of it unintelligible, but for the underlying theme: please god help me stop this cycle; I want OUT. I woke up on December 31, 2017, saying "never again," and for whatever reason, it stuck.

I quit it all cold turkey — booze, drugs, and cigarettes. At first I said I'd go a week and re-evaluate. Then thirty days. It was the first time in my adult life I had been without substances since I started smoking in middle school. After thirty days of clarity, I knew I wanted to be sober.

Comedy Workshop

A Facebook post advertising a stand-up comedy workshop caught my eye, and I signed up. It was a healthy way to replace the social needs the bar provided and the creative challenge I was searching for outside of music. I had no idea what I was doing, and that prompted me to lock in at every level. It was a blast.

The problem was that I was still in LA, where I knew exactly where to go and who to call if the slightest discomfort arose on my new path. And I was no stranger to the scope of my own trauma. Once I started digging in and shifting to recovery, discomfort would likely be the dominant vibe in my life. I knew this as I started accepting my circumstances instead of escaping them. 

The overall picture of the work headed my way was pretty dark: child abuse, narcissistic abuse, PTSD from multiple natural disasters, exploitation, societal trauma, sexual trauma, poverty. The light of recovery exposed the web of reality, and it wasn't intricate and fascinating like morning light revealing a dewy spider's web. I did what I was learning to do, and I kept showing up—not because these things happened to me, but because I now needed to work through them. But I was scared shitless of taking another drink in a moment of discomfort.

A partial list kept resurfacing in the back of my head as the urge to make major decisions kept coming up. It was recovery group wisdom: don't move or change jobs—no new relationships. Don't go to bars. But my intuition was stronger, and I had to choose to believe it, which was hard as I was grappling with discerning the difference between trauma, the flight response, and my intuition. Several people tried to convince me I was "skipping the work" and finding ways to avoid facing myself. I can see how it looked that way to them.

But here I am just months away from nine successful years in recovery. Nine years of roots, community, self-work, showing up, giving back…all once unfamiliar territory, all positive.

Here are some of the rules I broke:

Don't move. At 6 months sober, I moved at a friend's invitation to a Pacific Northwest town I'd never set foot in. I had too many numbers on my phone. There were too many visual triggers. All of the friends I drank and partied with were supportive of my choice to quit. No one pressured me to stay the same. I just didn't trust myself, and why would I? I'd failed myself dozens of times before. But the biggest issue was my own sensitivity after removing the buffer of substances and checking out: I could feel everything. And in a city of 4 million people, that's a lot of energy. An island of 65,000 people would give me more space and more time to process. Less input for my fledgling nervous system upgrades. I liken it to how a doctor might prescribe blood pressure medication to help an ailing heart heal, reducing the workload so it can build strength.

Don't leave your job. My main job at the time was assisting a film director in Malibu. She was honest from the beginning about "having issues" with her mom that led to bumpy relationships with other women. I realized our issues were recreating familiar relationship chaos that I was used to functioning in and contributing to. 

Sobriety showed me that this would be an unhealthy dynamic as I moved forward. I quit after I was blamed and screamed at for something beyond my control. I did leave a sincere, apologetic voicemail by the time I got home, but I knew a long-term commitment wasn't in my best interest. We are still in touch because my dog is her dog's puppy, and we share photos every year on the pups' birthdays. She keeps track of them all — I love that about her, and I don't hold on to the interpersonal challenges we shared the way I used to. This is success to me.

Don't go to bars. I knew, more than anything I'd ever been sure about in my life, that I never wanted to drink again. I also knew that if I weren't drinking, I wouldn't be smoking or abusing drugs. Alcohol is the troll at the bridge who gives everyone access. I still play music in bars. I still show up to the pub for friends' birthdays and the occasional get-together. Now I just leave a little earlier. It's a mix of reasonable bedtime discipline and the reality that after everyone's had a couple of drinks, I'm just not on the level.

Don't isolate. Before I moved up to the island, I secured a part-time job with a small landscaping company. The symbolism of being on an island and pulling weeds by myself didn't escape me. While I lived in the downstairs apartment of a good friend's house, I spent most of my time alone with my dog. I also had no idea how to make friends without starting at the bar and having some drinks to loosen up. I'd moved enough in my life to make this a successful habit. Add to that, just over a year after moving, COVID hit and forced people into lockdown. I surrendered to it. 

I took short car-camping trips to explore the Pacific Northwest, just me and my dog. I stayed home and read. I streamed live yoga classes for my students every day. I still spend most of my time alone simply because I have never known this peace. My greatest gift is closing my apartment door at the end of the day and just BE. I have never known a home by myself, without chaos, until now, and I feel like I owe myself the chance to catch up on peace. I could be very wrong and selfish in this choice. I am okay with that.

Harm reduction. I use cannabis. I didn't for the first year. I abstained from everything to get my mind back. After the first year, I started having bouts of insomnia, and I lost my appetite. I didn't want to rely on the medical system. I dropped out of it in 2005 after leaving my career, losing my health insurance, and discovering alternative medicine. 

The irony is not lost on me — the fact that I tried every non-alternative medicine known to man as a recreational experience is well documented. I loved Xanax. Vicodin. Oxycodone. When I stopped sleeping and eating, I simply didn't have the resources to find a doctor to prescribe me something, but it also wasn't the path I wanted to take. I didn't want to risk it.

Even as someone who shows up consistently for herself now, my biggest fear is being prescribed medication(s) and then losing my ability to get them from losing a job or income, or from insurance changing or a pharmacy no longer being available on the island. 

And the odds of that happening are pretty good, especially in today's pharmaceutical landscape. I used edibles to eat and sleep. I told a friend I was doing it, just in case. I kept the same bag of ten edibles for three months. I am grateful to have this option. Now I use CBG/CBD/THC in a 1:1:1 ratio. I can keep it in my cabinet and use it as needed—a far cry from hovering over any substance in my vicinity. 

Aside from a valium and a Halcion needed for a tooth implant surgery where I employed two friends in shifts to babysit me in case I lost my mind, it's the only thing I've used. I don't call myself "Cali Sober" because I don't use it regularly. I'm not tossing back THC drinks alongside friends who are drinking. It's not a replacement drug for getting wasted at the function. It's an aid for very real symptoms. I don't have to worry about developing a dependency and suddenly finding myself without it.

I'm not advocating dismissing traditional recovery methods or data. I am sharing my experience of going against the grain because it's not all that uncommon. But unfortunately, it's very common to be criticized for making these choices. I'm okay with criticism.

I'm also okay with the methods I've employed to save myself because they worked. Or they're working so far, and I feel very fortunate. I have lived in the same apartment for four and a half years, which is the longest I have ever lived anywhere in my adult life. I've been on the island for 8 years now, again, the longest I've ever lived anywhere in one fell swoop. 

Having roots is amazing. I have very few burnt bridges and a ton of friendships I've challenged and worked through mindfully. I have years-long professional relationships in music and yoga. I have walked away from things that don't serve me without guilt. I have a good therapist. I have a dog that has never been in a car with swirling cigarette smoke. That may be my favorite accomplishment.

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Read Lauren's bio by clicking her icon at the start of this article.

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