Get a Ticket to Insight and Freedom at Addictionland: Meet Cate Stevens

It was wonderful to become acquainted with Cate Stevens last fall and discover her amazing website.

Cate is the founder of Addictionland, a website to discuss any topic without facing judgment or unwanted personal exposure.

She has created a place where people can connect in a confidential way with other recovering people and/or professionals.

Meet Cate Stevens!

Please tell us about yourself and how you got into recovery.

I was introduced to a twelve-step program when I was in my twenties seeing a psychologist for an eating disorder.  She had long term sobriety and recognized my addiction ran deep. She suggested I start attending meetings to address my drinking problem but my denial kept me from acknowledging a problem with alcohol. I thought everyone in their twenties drank as I did.

It took me another decade to fully surrender after ending up in an emergency room from a drug and alcohol-induced seizure. The cardiologist who attended to me in the emergency room asked me if I had ever attended twelve-step meetings.  I went the very next day and have never looked back.  I was ready to surrender because it was clear to me I had no control anytime I put drugs into my body.

What is the approach that helps support your recovery?

My approach to recovery is based on the twelve steps and spiritual principles for living. I am convinced that I need outside Power to keep me sane and sober.  I get the daily help I need by being grateful for what I have, attending twelve-step meetings on a regular basis, sponsoring other women, praying, meditating, exercising, eating right, and tapping into anything that makes my heart sing, like writing.

How has the stigma of addiction affected you?

The stigma of addiction prevented me from staying honest after I alerted my parents and a psychologist to my eating disorder in college. I heard about Irish people and alcoholism, but not Jewish people. I came from a highly educated family and addiction was never discussed. The only people I considered addicts were people like Jane Fonda in the movie where she stumbled across the lawn drunk or addicts who stuck needles in their arms. I wasn’t that bad (which the stigma told me addicts are), and therefore I stayed sick.

Additionally, professional people rarely admit their dependency for fear of losing their job.  A wonderful man I worked for as a paralegal recognized my addiction and offered to send me to treatment.  Because of the stigma, I pretended nothing was wrong and could have died from a drug overdose.

Why did you decide to start Addictionland.com?

I always wanted to write a book.  In 2010, I hired a life coach to help me write Addictionland (the memoir) and the idea of a website was simultaneously born. The purpose of the website was to create a bridge to recovery for people suffering in silence from all types of addiction.

When I was a college-aged girl suffering from multiple types of addiction, I had nowhere to turn without feeling judged. Although my parents wanted what was best for me, they didn’t understand the process of recovery. When I didn’t recover “fast enough” for them or myself, I decided to go back into hiding and pretend everything was fine.

Addictionland was created to help people like me. I wanted others to have free access to great insight from recovery experts who understand the disease of addiction and are passionate about offering solutions. I wanted the information to be right at their fingertips in the privacy of their own homes. I also wanted to create a place for addicts in the process of recovery to share their journey. Listening to other addicts share their trials and victories has been very powerful to me in my own healing process.

Tell us about your book and why you decided to write it.

Addictionland: Key Lessons from My Rollercoaster Ride to Freedom from Alcohol, Drug, Food, and Unhealthy Relationship Addiction will be released on Kindle in the near future. Writing has been as natural to me as breathing since early childhood.  I didn’t realize it then but I needed to write as much as I enjoyed it.

I always had a goal of writing a book and after a decade of recovery and the birth of my son, I felt ready for a new kind of delivery.  I felt my soul needed to be delivered on an entirely new level.  Although I conducted many soul searching inventories throughout my years of recovery, I had a sense this book would enable me to go deeper into my truth.

Most recovery memoirs were isolated to one type of addiction.  I knew many women in recovery struggled from multiple forms of addiction like I did.  I thought it was very important that other people realized this and that full recovery from all addictions is possible.

Additionally, I enjoy storytelling, have a gift for self-awareness, and wanted the book to be a tool for others to identify their own patterns, and possibly find hope and relief.

What are the three tips that you would give to parents who are concerned about their children?

The tips I would offer to parents who are concerned about addiction in their children are:

1) Addiction is a family disease.  Most times when a child is addicted, other people in the family system are addicted as well. Family addiction might be focusing on other people (co-dependency) or a physical addiction like alcoholism. Occasionally, the child is the only one with substance abuse but it is always helpful for the family to seek their own kind of peace before they attempt to help the addict. Twelve steps meetings for the family members or loved ones of addicts exist throughout the world and offer tangible results when followed.

2) Addiction is a brain disease, not a moral disease.  Educate yourself on addiction so that you can offer your child the understanding they need to turn their life around.  Stigma and ignorance are some of the biggest pitfalls of the recovery process.  If your child sees that you are open to learning about the disease of addiction and aren’t judging them, you will foster an environment of growth and positive change.

3) Despite your best and worst efforts, you can’t control addiction in another human being (including your child).  Addiction has a mind and a process of its own.  Addiction only ceases to cause harm when the addict admits his problem and seeks help for himself. You are not powerful enough to cause addiction, nor or you powerful enough to end it.  Positive thoughts and prayer have been the best means available, since the beginning of time, to transform darkness to light. Let go and let Good prevail.

What is your hope for the future with regard to addiction and recovery?

My website has paved the way for me to meet great recovery experts like Patty Powers and Seth Jaffee from A&E’s Sober Coach, as well as Christopher Kennedy Lawford,  President Kennedy’s nephew, and leading recovery author and activist. Often, we discuss the stigma of addiction and how proper legislation could help remove the stigma and offer greater access to treatment for those who need it.

I would like to see the stigma of addiction replaced by education and instead of throwing people into jail for crimes related to addiction, I would like to see the addiction treated first and then monitor the individuals to see if they repeat the crimes.  Obviously, not all people who use drugs want to stop. However, with education and a different system for dealing with addiction, we can offer help to those who truly want it.

In this way, we save the taxpayers millions of dollars which are currently being spent in jails and/or hospitals and other healthcare facilities.  Addiction costs people dollars, time, aggravation, and lives.

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