The Ascent - Part II: Rebuilding Life in Recovery Through Six Lifelines, Forgiveness and Clarity

November 2, 2026

Symon Cope, Author

John Makohen, Subject Matter Expert

KEY POINTS

Symon Cope describes rebuilding life in recovery through six personal lifelines, along with forgiveness, amends, and ongoing self-examination.

The six numbered sections address mortality, connection, love, self-development, a healthier relationship with money, and lessons from business.

His sponsor and his wife are central to his account of honesty, accountability, and learning to relate differently.

He presents the lifelines as support for ongoing work, not miracle cures or requirements everyone must follow.

Introduction: Rising Requires More Than Sobriety 

Recovery is often described as a rebirth, and it doesn't begin with a clean slate. Certainly, my life before sobriety began with a crowded mind, a damaged body, and a past that refused to stay quiet. The ascent from addiction wasn't a single upward surge. It was a long, uneven climb built on acceptance, understanding, forgiveness, structure, resilience, and the willingness to confront the parts of myself I'd avoided for years. 

In my first memoir, 50 Years of Pain, I described six lifelines that helped me survive early recovery. They weren't abstract ideas, and they weren't the sole tools in my box. They were practical, emotional, and sometimes uncomfortable, but they kept me anchored when everything felt unstable. Alongside them came the deeper work: decluttering my mind, making amends to the living and the dead, including myself, facing the ghosts of my past, and learning to build a life that didn't require escape or unreality. 

This article brings those elements together — a summary of the lifelines, the steps, the people, the love, and the internal shifts that made the ascent possible. 

The Six Lifelines for a Rebuilding Life in Recovery:

The Framework That Held Me Up 

These six lifelines weren't a theory; they were a survival kit. Each one addressed a different part of the chaos I was trying to climb out of. 

Lifeline 1: To Know Mortality. This meant facing the truth about the way I had lived for years. I had called it selective honesty, but that was another convenient phrase, another way to soften what it really was: dishonesty. I had lied to myself, to the people around me, and to the reality of what was happening. I became an expert at telling just enough truth to sound convincing, while carefully withholding the parts that might have forced me to change. 

I remember the private calculations of deciding which detail to admit, which consequence to minimize, which version of events would make my drinking seem less serious than it was. I  could turn a disaster into a bad day, a broken promise into a misunderstanding, and a pattern of destruction into something temporary. I reshaped facts until I could almost believe them myself. Meanwhile, my body was deteriorating, my mind was becoming increasingly unstable,  and the people who cared about me were being pulled into the wreckage. 

Then came the moment when there was nowhere left to hide. I was told by my GP that, if I  continued drinking as I was, I would be dead within two years. I can still feel the impact of those words. Two years. Not "one day," not "eventually," but a finite measure of time suddenly placed before me. I imagined birthdays I might never see, places I might never go, conversations I might never have, and people I might leave behind, carrying questions I had refused to answer. 

In that moment, mortality stopped being an abstract idea and became a deadline. The carefully constructed stories I had told myself collapsed. I could no longer negotiate with the truth or edit it into something easier to bear. Honesty was no longer a virtue I could aspire to when it suited me. It became the first condition of survival.

Lifeline 2: We Are Not Alone. Recovery is not a solo pursuit, although for years I had treated life as if it were. I believed that needing other people was a weakness and that asking for help meant admitting defeat. But self-reliance had slowly hardened into isolation, and isolation had given my addiction exactly what it needed: secrecy, silence, and the freedom to grow without challenge. Alone, I could lower my standards, break promises to myself, and gradually stop caring because nobody was close enough to notice. 

My Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, John, became one of the people who helped me find my way back. He didn't offer reassurance just to make me feel better. He offered something far more valuable - clarity. He did not try to rescue me, and he never pretended the work would be easy. Instead, he stood beside me, pointed me towards the path, and expected me to walk it. 

I remember one occasion when I called him with a carefully prepared explanation for why I had failed to do something I had promised. I had rehearsed the reasons until they sounded perfectly reasonable to me. John listened without interrupting. When I had finished, there was a pause. Then he said, calmly, "That's a good story. Now tell me what really happened." 

The question stopped me. Beneath all my explanations was a much simpler truth: I had avoided the task because it made me uncomfortable, and then I had tried to disguise avoidance as circumstance. John had seen through my excuses immediately. He did not accuse or humiliate me. He simply refused to participate in the lie. That steadiness made it impossible for me to hide, but safe enough for me to be honest. 

John helped me recognize behavioral patterns I couldn't yet see for myself. When I drifted, he held me consistently accountable. He reminded me that accountability was not punishment. It was protection. It prevented me from slipping quietly back into old behaviors and constructing another persuasive story to justify them. 

As I began spending time with people in recovery, I discovered that connection was not only about receiving support. I can listen, contribute, serve, and help others. I was no longer merely someone being carried; I could carry a little of another person's baggage. That realization restored something addiction had eroded, a sense that I  belonged and that my presence could have value. 

Recovery was never about proving that I could stand alone. That belief had nearly destroyed me. It was about learning to stand honestly with others, ask for help, offer it in return, and let people hold me to my word when my resolve weakened. I needed people not because I was incapable, but because isolation had made me vulnerable. Connection made me accountable, and accountability helped keep me alive. 

Lifeline 3: To Be in Love. Addiction thrives in chaos, but it also feeds on self-loathing. For years, I believed I knew love. Looking back, I can see that many of those relationships were shaped less by love than by my need to control something, anything, because my own life felt completely beyond my control. I wanted loyalty, reassurance, and devotion from others while offering far less than I imagined. In my mind, I was giving everything. In reality, I was often demanding that another person carry the emotional burden I refused to face myself. 

I confused intensity with intimacy. If a relationship was turbulent, consuming, or dramatic, I  mistook that for passion. If I feared losing someone, I called it love. If I tried to limit their freedom, question their choices, or make them responsible for my sense of security, I told myself I was showing how much I cared. But possession isn't care, and need isn't love. Much of what I called devotion was fear wearing a more flattering mask. 

I remember arguments in which I barely heard what the other person was saying. I was too busy preparing my defense, reshaping the facts, or finding the words that would make them stay. Even when I apologized, an unspoken demand often lay beneath it: reassure me, forgive me, rescue me from the discomfort of what I have done. I wanted peace without change and closeness without vulnerability. I wanted to be loved, but I hadn't yet learned to love without making someone else responsible for filling the emptiness inside me. 

Sobriety forced me to see that real love could not survive where fear, manipulation, and self-pity were running the show. That recognition hurt because it stripped away another story I had told myself: that my relationships failed only because other people misunderstood me. Recovery forced me to confront my part. I could not keep asking for honesty while hiding, for trust while behaving unpredictably, or for devotion while remaining emotionally unavailable. 

When I entered recovery, I began to understand why certain clichés endure. They contain truths we resist until experience makes them unavoidable. I could not truly love another person until I  had learned to live with myself, not merely tolerate myself but become someone I could respect and eventually love. That did not mean becoming selfish or self-satisfied. It meant becoming honest enough to admit my faults, stable enough not to make my emotions someone else's responsibility, and secure enough to give without silently demanding rescue in return. 

As my recovery began, I found an honest, enduring love with my wife, Michelle. The difference wasn't that our relationship required no effort, but that it wasn't built on chaos, performance, or control. I did not have to manufacture drama to feel connected or become someone else to feel worthy. Trust replaced suspicion, patience replaced urgency, and truth replaced concealment. 

One of the most powerful changes was discovering that love could leave room for freedom. Michelle didn't need to rescue me, and I didn't need to possess her. We could stand beside one another without either of us disappearing into the other. That kind of love felt quieter than the intensity I had once mistaken for passion, but it was deeper and far more courageous. It asked me to be present, truthful, responsible, and willing to be known. 

Through loving Michelle and letting her love me, I began to understand that love isn't proven by how desperately we cling to someone. It shows up in the safety we create, the truth we can bear together, and the freedom we give each other to stay whole. Recovery did not simply teach me how to stop drinking. It taught me to stop using love as an escape and to start offering it as a gift. 

Lifeline 4: Self-Development. Addiction had left me estranged from reality and imprisoned inside my own perception of the truth. By then, disconnection was not something that happened occasionally; it was where I lived. I was diagnosed with Dissociative Disorder or Personality Disorder in 1980. It had been a pattern of behavior for as long as I could remember, a retreat so familiar that I often didn't recognize I was doing it. I could be physically present in a room while feeling absent from my own life, watching events unfold from a distance and responding through a fog of distorted thoughts. So, attempts at connection became the antidote. Meetings, conversations, and other people's recovery stories began to draw me back into the world.

At first, I sometimes sat in those rooms convinced that nobody could understand the confusion inside me. Then someone described a thought I believed belonged only to me or admitted a fear I had carried in silence for years. I remember someone saying they looked capable on the outside but felt detached and overwhelmed inside. Our lives looked different, but the recognition was immediate. For the first time, I did not feel uniquely broken. I felt understood. 

That moment mattered because it gave me more than companionship; it gave me a language for experiences I had never properly examined. I began to realize that sobriety alone would not automatically repair my mind. If I wanted to remain well, I needed to understand my mental ill health, how it had developed, how it revealed itself, what triggered it, and which tools could help me manage it. I had spent years fleeing uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Recovery required me to turn towards them with curiosity rather than fear. 

For a long time, I believed alcohol was the problem. In one sense, it clearly was. Drinking was destroying my health, my relationships, and my ability to function. But removing alcohol exposed what had been underneath it. Old wounds, entrenched beliefs, destructive patterns, and coping strategies had existed long before the consequences became impossible to ignore. Alcohol had not created every difficulty; it had become the method I used to avoid confronting them. 

Many people struggling with addiction understandably believe that their chosen substance or behavior is the whole problem. Sometimes it may be central to the truth, but often it is also the visible symptom of something deeper. If those underlying causes remain unexplored, they can continue to bind us to addiction even after the substance itself has gone. The object of the compulsion may change, but the need to escape can remain. 

Self-development therefore became vital to my recovery. It wasn't about endlessly analyzing myself or trying to become perfect. It was about recognizing my patterns before they controlled me. Noticing when I was withdrawing, when my thinking was becoming distorted, when shame was turning into self-punishment, or when discomfort was awakening the old urge to disappear. 

I came to understand that recovery demanded more than abstinence. It required education, reflection, practice, and a willingness to keep transforming. I needed to examine myself honestly without using what I discovered as another reason to hate myself. I needed to replace avoidance with awareness and instinctive reactions with deliberate choices. Most importantly, I needed to accept that transformation wasn't a single breakthrough but a daily commitment. 

Connection helped return me to reality, but understanding helped me stay there. Through other people, professional support, and continued self-examination, I began to recognize that my mind was not an enemy to defeat. It was something I needed to understand and learn to care for. Recovery was not simply the removal of the thing that had been killing me. It was the gradual development of the knowledge, tools, and courage required to build a life in which I no longer had to escape myself. 

Lifeline 5: A Healthy Money Mind. Do I really need to say that addiction stands in the way of a prosperous life? For a long time, I would have resisted the idea. I might have admitted that drinking damaged my body or unsettled my mind. Still, money felt like a separate matter, as though financial disorder were simply bad luck, unfavorable circumstances, or a consequence of not caring about managing my money. Recovery made me see that addiction reaches far beyond the substance itself. It distorts judgment, erodes discipline, and steadily weakens the ability to make intelligent choices about building a future which includes earning, spending, and saving money. 

I grew up in a relatively poor Jewish family in the 1960s, when the shadow of the Second World  War still hung over everyday life. Economic uncertainty wasn't abstract; it showed up in cautious spending, the instinct to waste nothing, and the understanding that security could never be taken for granted. I was taught to work hard and respect effort. Yet I also absorbed the age's rebellion. Money came to seem morally suspect, tied to greed, conformity, and corruption. I accepted the familiar phrase that it was the root of all evil without stopping to ask whether money itself was the problem, or what people chose to do with it. 

That contradiction suited my addiction perfectly. I wanted the security money could provide while dismissing the habits it took to earn it. I could tell myself that planning was dull, saving was miserly, and ambition was somehow impure. In truth, this philosophy often provided a respectable disguise for impulsiveness. If money didn't matter, I didn't have to account for where it went. If the future was uncertain, I could justify spending in the present. If prosperity was morally questionable, I never had to confront the discipline necessary to achieve it. 

I remember looking at a bank statement and feeling the familiar drop in my stomach. The individual amounts didn't seem catastrophic: a withdrawal here, another purchase there, small sums that had seemed unimportant at the time. But together on the page, they told a story I didn't want to read. Money that could have paid a bill, reduced a debt, or created a little security had vanished into short-lived relief. I folded the statement, pushed it out of sight,  and promised myself I would deal with it later. That gesture captured the problem perfectly. I wasn't just avoiding numbers; I was avoiding reality. 

Addiction always made the immediate moment feel more urgent than the future. Escape mattered more than security. Relief mattered more than responsibility. Compulsion overruled planning, saving, earning, and building. The cost wasn't limited to what I spent. It included the opportunities I missed, the decisions I postponed, the risks I took, and the mental energy fear and avoidance consumed. Financial chaos became another source of shame, and shame gave me another reason to escape. The cycle fed itself. 

Recovery required me to develop what I came to call a healthier money mind. I had to stop seeing money as either evil or salvation. It was neither a moral stain nor a magical cure. It was another tool, one I could use to create stability, preserve dignity, expand choice, support the people I loved, and serve purposes beyond myself. 

Learning to handle money differently meant learning to live differently. I had to look at the figures instead of hiding the statement, make plans instead of promises, and accept that small, consistent decisions mattered more than dramatic intentions. Saving became an act of care for my future self. Paying what I owed became an expression of integrity. Earning honestly restored confidence, and spending consciously gave me freedom rather than deprivation. 

I discovered that prosperity wasn't simply about possessing wealth. It was the ability to live without being governed by panic, impulse, or denial. It meant having enough clarity to make choices and enough discipline to live with their consequences. Money could not make me whole, but learning to manage it responsibly became evidence that I was becoming whole.

Addiction had taught me to sacrifice tomorrow for a moment of escape. Recovery taught me to build tomorrow one decision at a time. Prosperity became possible not when money replaced addiction as the center of my life, but when clarity replaced compulsion. 

Lifeline 6: How to be in Business. You may not believe this lifeline applies to you. Not everyone wants to start a company, employ people, or take the risks associated with entrepreneurship. But the lessons I learned in business reached far beyond the workplace. They taught me responsibility, self-belief, resilience, and the courage to make choices without waiting for someone else to make them. 

Working for someone else can provide security, structure, and a regular wage. There is dignity, and for many people, it is exactly the right path. But I had also learned to depend upon external authority, waiting for permission, direction, approval, and reward. That habit echoed something deeper in me. Addiction had already trained me to surrender responsibility, to impulse, to fear, to circumstance, and eventually to the substance itself. I had spent too much of my life behaving as though the forces controlling me were always somewhere outside me. 

Entrepreneurship demanded the opposite. At its best, it required me to own my choices, my risks, my mistakes, and growth. Nowhere to hide when a decision failed. I could blame the market, a customer, a supplier, or bad timing, but blame did not solve the problem or pay the bills. Business asked the same uncomfortable question that recovery kept asking me: What are you going to do next? 

I remember a moment when something I had planned carefully went wrong and left me facing a decision I did not feel qualified to make. That experience became another form of recovery. Addiction had shackled me to impulse, fear, and avoidance; business required clarity, courage,  discipline, and accountability. It forced me to think beyond immediate relief and consider the longer-term consequences of my decisions. It taught me to solve problems rather than hide from them, learn from failure rather than be destroyed by it, and keep going when confidence was absent, but commitment remained. 

Business also changed how I understood freedom. I had once imagined freedom as the absence of demands, the ability to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. But that version of freedom had led me towards chaos. Real freedom was not the absence of responsibility. It was the willingness to own responsibility and the confidence that grew from doing so. 

Being in business taught me to think creatively, act decisively, and trust myself again. That trust did not appear all at once. I rebuilt it through small promises kept, difficult conversations faced, mistakes admitted, and problems resolved. Each time I showed up when avoidance would have been easier, I recovered another part of myself. 

The qualities that helped me build a business were the same qualities that helped me rebuild my life. Honesty when concealment seemed safer, resilience when circumstances became difficult, service instead of self-absorption, persistence when progress was slow, and the courage to keep showing up even when I doubted myself. 

Conclusion: The Ascent Is Ongoing 

None of these six lifelines fixed everything. They weren't miracle cures, and they didn't remove the need for deeper emotional and psychological work. They gave me structure, a framework strong enough to hold me while the rest of my recovery unfolded. They created stability where there had been chaos, connection where there had been isolation, and responsibility where there had once been avoidance. 

The lifelines did not carry me to the top. They gave me something to hold onto while I learned to climb. 

Recovery doesn't end. It's continuous; it evolves. The six lifelines, forgiveness and amends work, mental decluttering, the Twelve Steps, my sponsor's guidance, the grounding force of love, and the lessons of the past continue to shape my life today. 

The descent was chaotic and destructive. The ascent is intentional and grounded. 

It isn't perfect or linear. But it's real. Although I still live with body dysmorphia, negative thinking, and dissociation, it is possible to live a healthy, prosperous life, not because of one moment of clarity, but because of the ongoing work of becoming someone who no longer needs to run from himself. 

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