The Room where Addiction and Recovery Meet

Image credit: Photo by vk-red on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

I have discovered that there is one room in every house that is the nexus of both the spiritual and the corporeal, of cleanliness and filth, of addiction and recovery. That room is the bathroom. Yes, the bathroom.

My husband and I were remarking tonight that at 5 and 7, our children already understand that the bathroom is where you go when you want to be alone. As the only room in the house where a person can feel free to lock the door and spend an extend period in absolute unquestioned privacy, bathrooms are where we become literally and figuratively naked. We show our most private selves alone. We vomit and defecate there and we wash ourselves clean.

Talk to the family member of almost any addict or alcoholic and you are likely to hear tales of woe around time spent in the bathroom: the alcoholic hides a bottle in the tank of the toilet, the junky shoots up there, the sex addict sneaks off to masturbate. With laptops and wireless networks, I imagine even a gambling addict can sneak in a few quiet bets.

And we codependents can become obsessed with that room. Whether or not we know or suspect what is actually going on in there, we listen outside the door (as I did many times with my husband, who would mutter to himself in the height of his addiction) or sniff for evidence that actual bathroom business was what was taking so long. I was talking to a friend recently whose marriage broke up over addiction, and she couldn't wait to remodel the bathroom, because it was so strongly associated in her mind with her ex-husband's using.

But when we are in recovery, the bathroom can become a quiet, private place for prayer or meditation. We can let bathwater envelope us or the stream of a shower wash over us, and feel our bodies comforted or renewed. When I have guests visiting guests in visiting who aren't aware of my recovery, the bathroom is where I sneak off to connect with God or read recovery literature or write in my journal. I've even written blog posts while hiding in the bathroom.

How we use our time in the bathroom, what our spirits do when they encounter that privacy, can act as a small indicator of where we are in our spiritual journeys. Are we there to hide our filth or clean it up?

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This post originally published at The Second Road on August 31, 2008.