The coronavirus pandemic is tough for recovering addicts

With lockdown causing havoc at 12-step meetings, Charlotte Cripps looks back at the early days of her recovery when it was all about hugs not drugs

Illustration by Amara May

With everything under lockdown – including 12-step meetings – it’s not easy for recovering addicts. Especially for those struggling to get a few days clean and sober. It’s meant to be all about hugs not drugs – but that has fallen by the wayside. Now it’s all on zoom, which is not ideal as I found out last weekend when we were photo-bombed by outrageous porn.

Then there are the small private meetings. I’d been invited to one called LA/London/Prague – only because I have an A-list sponsor. But all the members are rich and famous. These recovering addicts are sitting in their gated communities looking bedraggled, a bit like Tom Hanks at the end of Castaway, and they are only in week four. They are worrying about what’s happening with their £3m paycheck: there is no contingency fund for celebrities. They may have to slum it for a while and face the reality of doing their own housework.

In NA these sorts of issues are called “high-class problems” when compared with somebody shaking in the corner who can’t get clean. Nevertheless, recovery is “a bridge to normal life” – whatever your normal is.

The trouble is that an addict alone is an addict in bad company as NA warns. The very thing you are not meant to do is isolate. So lockdown is about the worst scenario. I honestly don't know how I would have coped getting clean and sober while confined to my flat.

The high and lows of early recovery are similar to the intensity the rest of the world feels in lockdown. Most parents are getting through it with the help of alcohol – I don’t have that luxury.

Most parents are getting through lockdown with the help of alcohol – I don’t have that luxury

It's only 2pm and I’ve already done the daily walk, the craft activity – what now? TV feels like the only sane option. Perhaps I could just stick on Frozen again for the kids and do a zoom meeting? My dad can't understand why I still do NA meetings – now I'm 21 years clean and sober. It's mainly to remember the horrors of where I've come from – not that I can forget the hell of those rehabs – and to help new people, as well as trying to find solutions to life's problems. I don't want to float off in a cloud of denial, thinking that I'm fine, have a nice glass of wine and wind up dead.

I decide to go food shopping and end up at the premium fish store in Notting Hill. They are handing our gloves and masks to customers wanting langoustine and other seafood like it’s a new trend. Shouldn’t they be saving them for the NHS? I can’t buy any old shit fish for my 87-year-old dad, who has given me his credit card to buy his provisions while self-isolating. So I queue up two metres apart in a line outside. But it’s very hard to social distance with my giant golden retriever pulling my arm off to sniff everybody’s posh food bags. I’m desperate not to get coronavirus and panic buy 12 scallops for his dinner that night.

The shop is directly opposite where I had spotted Alex’s Toyota pick-up truck all those years ago outside his new place in Westbourne Grove when he moved out of mine. But I didn’t see him for weeks. I’d heard he was back in recovery meetings and my heart felt alive. It’s bittersweet memories – as I head home – thinking – he’s still so part of my life, even though he’s gone.