Reevaluating Personal Anonymity in Twelve Step Recovery

By Brian Hyman

My name is Brian Hyman and I am a recovered alcoholic. I recently celebrated 16 years of continuous sobriety. This milestone was achieved one day at a time, as a result of working the Twelve Steps.

I am not an expert in the field of addiction recovery. However, I’ve taught thousands of yoga classes over the last 13 years at Cliffside Malibu, a prominent treatment center for substance use disorders in Southern California. I wrote the award-winning book Recovery with Yoga: Supportive Practices for Transcending Addiction. I created five audio courses for Insight Timer about recovery – Emotional Sobriety: Finding Freedom, Harmony, and Peace in Recovery; Sobriety Q&A: Insights for Addiction Recovery; Dharma of Recovery: 5 Powers; Understanding the Twelve Steps; and Recovery: Principles for a Purposeful Life.

My work also includes recording guided meditations, writing articles, leading workshops and retreats, participating in interviews, and exhibiting my paintings to help reduce shame and stigma around mental health and substance abuse issues.

I share about my sobriety to let people know that recovery is possible and it’s OK to ask for help. When I got sober in 2009 at the age of 34, I didn’t know anyone in recovery. I didn’t know anybody in a Twelve Step program. I didn’t know anything about rehabs, sober living houses, or in-patient and out-patient rehabilitation programs. I was embarrassed that I had a problem with drinking and other things. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. And I didn’t know where to go or what to do to try to find healing and transformation.

Fortunately, I typed “What to do if you have a problem with alcohol?” into Google. I read a few articles and found my way to a Twelve Step meeting where alcoholics gathered to share their experience, strength, and hope. I heard members speak with sincerity and humility and I related to what they shared. I wanted what they had so I did what was suggested as a program of action. I’m still alive and sober – and happy, joyous, and free – all these years later.

I’ve often imagined what might’ve happened had I not found this new design for living. If pride, shame, or wrong perceptions prevented me from surrendering old ways of thinking, speaking, and acting. If sober people weren’t available and willing to answer the call when I became ready to seek support and ask for help.

Twelve Step programs and their members adhere to the principle of anonymity as a spiritual foundation to protect the sanctity and integrity of the groups. This guarantees that spiritual qualities are prioritized over individual personalities. This creates safe meeting spaces where members can speak honestly and freely. This also helps participants focus on a primary purpose to help others achieve sobriety or freedom.

Early in my recovery, I viewed anonymity as a form of secrecy that protected me and my family from judgment and prejudice. I did not tell anyone about my sobriety, and nobody in recovery had the right to break my anonymity. However, as my sober days accumulated under this cloak of privacy, it was difficult for me to connect with like-minded people in recovery outside of Twelve Step meetings.

I began to recognize a personal need to reconcile a division between Twelve Step meetings and the rest of society as I wanted to feel at home anywhere in the world. I searched for living examples of those who respected the Twelve Steps and also carried a powerful message of hope, freedom, and contentment into all their endeavors. I soon met a sober yoga teacher who devoted his life and energy to helping people in recovery. We struck up a friendship based on our mutual affinity for the integration of Twelve Step philosophy and yogic teachings. And a new definition of anonymity – marked by humility, purpose, respect, service, and spirituality – began to take shape for me.

It is my experience that people in recovery are here to shine, not hide. We become whole again in order to love and serve others. We get a second chance to live with meaning and purpose so that we can leave the world better and brighter than we found it. We use our personal time and professional skills to offer accessible and helpful tools, suggestions, principles, and practices to anyone who needs support anywhere. And we simultaneously honor individual and collective anonymity by only sharing what it was like for us on our personal path, what happened in our life, and what it’s like today as a person in recovery.

Today, I identify as a recovered alcoholic in the rooms of recovery, and out in the world if this declaration helps others. I – and many others in recovery – are here to help those in need. We are willing to support anyone at any stage on their path toward recovery. We can share what worked for us; we can give our time, knowledge, and energy. Ultimately, we are the ordinary, everyday – anonymous – people who are grateful to be able to try to carry a message to others.

Brian Hyman, RYT, is an award-winning author, yoga and meditation teacher, artist, and father. His work can be found at www.brianhymanyoga.com.