When Even the Crutches Break – From Illusions into Reality
Working with glass at my workbench, a desire grew stronger within me to step out into space after making traditional, flat Tiffany pieces. I wanted to create a three-dimensional piece. One thing was certain inside me: I wanted to craft it entirely out of glass, without using any other accessories or supports. I knew that if a creation cannot stand on its own pure glass base, its stability is merely a false illusion. Glass does not tolerate lies. I sat there at the workbench over the flat pieces of glass, longing for spatial balance, while having no idea how I was going to bring it to life.
In the first years of my recovery, the fellowship, my parents, and the meetings were my main lifeline and hope. I went to meetings almost every day, immersed myself in the literature and psychology books, worked the steps with my sponsor, and took on service. Everything I learned, received, and experienced in therapy, I tried to build into every single day of my life. I believed this external safety net would somehow hold me, and then, one by one, the ruthless blows began to arrive.
The first blow was losing the illusion of the wider fellowship. Due to vaccination rules during the Covid period, I found myself excluded from the national convention in Győr. With two years of sobriety, I experienced what it feels like when a community that constantly talks about humility and love shuts me out without hesitation, while my own survival could have depended on being there.
The second blow hit me in my own home group in Gyöngyös. I had to experience how a community I believed to be my last refuge turned into a firing squad. I watched as a fellow member was publicly humiliated and cast out in a premeditated way. In doing so, one of our core principles was trampled into the mud: that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking, and that outside issues have no place in the room.
When I honestly shared at the meeting how deeply this exclusion affected me—openly owning my own flaws as well—I handed them a weapon. In Alcoholics Anonymous, a share is sacred and inviolable: what is said in the room must stay in the room. Despite this, my most vulnerable thoughts were taken outside, turned into gossip, and used for incitement. It soon became clear to me that this was a completely standard way of operating. I was confronted with the fact that an older member with decades of sobriety would pull aside anyone who did not conform to the expected views and tell them never to come back. Later, this person did the exact same thing to me. This hurt me deeply because I knew the truth: turning an alcoholic away from a meeting can be equal to a death sentence.
My stand was followed by six months of constant provocation during meetings. When I finally reached my breaking point, I hit back with an angry, deliberate, ruthless, and unprintable sentence. They got what they were waiting for. Instead of self-examination, this moment gave them the ultimate excuse for an open attack. For two years in my home group, I lived through collective humiliation, abuse, ostracism, and exclusion—often led by people who were not even present at my original share. In this same tense, destructive environment, a false rumor was spread about another member with decades of sobriety, claiming he had relapsed and was drinking again. I had to experience that the member spreading the rumor took on buffet service at a gathering, spreading this slander from behind the counter to an ever-wider circle.
Seven years and a great deal of pain had to pass for the veil to fall. I had to realize that the place where unconditional love should have been was actually an abusive environment of constant interrogation, attacks, and lecturing.
That was when the realization struck me: this dynamic copies the exact hierarchy I experienced in my family. Where subordination rules, and whatever the adult, the parent says, I am forced to accept as the only right way. Where I have no say, because I am the "stupid child." I realized that this is not love; it is the complete domination and disregard of the other person. Whenever I do not act, think, and live my life according to expectations, support, help, and love are immediately withdrawn from me. I received this third blow from my parents and my partner at the time.
I am no better than anyone else; I am just as sick as they are. I lived that way during my active addiction; today I am constantly changing, I no longer walk that path, and I cannot allow myself to operate like that. Even so, I stayed too long in this toxic soil. No matter how hard I tried to grow clean roots, rot eventually poisons everything. It was not easy, and after nearly seven years, I finally walked away from that environment. It was such ruthless pressure that many would have escaped into alcohol. I, at that exact time, put down 26 years of smoking for good; it never even crossed my mind to cling to another crutch.
At the workbench, I channeled this immense internal tension and all the negativity into creativity and art: instead of destroying, I created. As the external crutches broke one after another in my life—the illusion of the wider fellowship, my home group, and then my family and relationship—the answer became clear to me over the glass as well. I understood that I cannot build external supports for either my art or my sobriety. If I want true balance, I must stand on my own clean foundation, without any hidden props or role-playing.
As the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous writes, there are life situations where writing is the tool that serves recovery. For me right now, this blog is my sharing, and creating Tiffany glass art is my therapy. When the time comes, I will be back at the meetings, because I have received so much only to pass it on. My program lives within me, in my heart and in my soul, not in putting on an act.
2677 days – one day at a time.
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