I had my first drink in elementary school, and by high school, I was using drugs in a dizzying downward spiral. But I survived as an addict long enough to recover and make it to my real life.

My story has a twist: just after my recovery began at age 24, I was on the MTV show called, appropriately, The Real World. I had to expose, on national television, my early days of recovery — despite myself. But the temporary embarrassment and vulnerability were nothing compared to celebrating years of living clean and sober. And my time on the show turned out to be an advantage. Because of my Real World visibility, I’ve put a familiar face on demonstrating how both addiction and recovery can happen, even for the young.

Today, I speak to college students all over the country about my insane addiction years, and healthy life in recovery, grateful to share my experience, strength, and hope. My book, Clean: A New Generation in Recovery Speaks Out, is my way of reaching an even larger number of kids who struggle with the issues that almost destroyed me.

Addiction is still personally relevant for me now that I’m clean; it’s ruined people from every part of my own circle. Two of my uncles died of AIDS as a result of their heroin habits, and I grew up with a father crippled by alcoholism. These first-hand experiences make the words I hear in 12-step groups about “carrying the message to others” hit very close to home. I realize that some people don’t ever get to carry the message; they have to be the darker side of the message.

Every day, I am reminded that in order not to die from addiction, I have to learn to live with it. How? is the big question. After all, my generation and the kids younger than me are used to an intense social scene. Going out with friends, which often involves drinking and drugging, feels like the center of our universe. But while I was addicted, I couldn’t experience clean fun because I didn’t know what fun was. I only knew how to get high, drink, and hang out at clubs. When all that changed and getting high was no longer an option, I didn’t know what to do other than go to 12-step meetings.

But the biggest challenge wasn’t necessarily giving up drinking, drugs, and the chemically-soaked social scene. It was learning how to live as a person who can connect with other people, be useful, be creative, and have moments of genuine happiness. When I got clean, my imagination of what was possible in my life was still very stunted. The long list of what I have actually experienced during my few short years of sobriety is more than anything I could have imagined back in 2001.

Clearly, learning to live in recovery as a young person is complex — and sometimes feels nearly impossible. We’re not rediscovering and reclaiming who we were before we were alcoholics and addicts, because we had not yet become who we would be. We get clean at 23 and feel like we’re still 13 emotionally. The crisis that led to our bottoming out turns into an identity crisis as we try to catch up with ourselves and answer the question, “Who exactly am I?”

There is plenty of help along the recovery path for those willing to accept it, but the bottom line is that it takes a moment of turning away from self-destruction and back to self-fulfillment to get on that path in the first place. For addicts and alcoholics, no one can say precisely how to have that revelation. The recovered can only describe what it was like for them — how they began to use, the descent into abuse and denial, floundering in the bottom of their disease — until, finally, a split second of grace literally saved their lives.

Since that moment of grace saved me, I’ve been doing my best to try and pass it on. Lecturing about addiction and recovery is an important part of my life and career. It is a gift to have kids attracted by my story of being on The Real World, and then come away with a deeper understanding of addiction and recovery. Some of the most intense and satisfying moments of my life come through these talks, like the time a college student stood up, holding a copy of the book Narcotics Anonymous. She announced that she had five days clean, and the whole auditorium erupted in applause. I know my speaking only helps on a small scale, but it is important for the people touched by the knowledge that recovery is possible, no matter where you are or how old you are. Sometimes I connect and sometimes I don’t; it seems to depend most on how willing I am to be personal and vulnerable. But every lecture I make is a chance for someone else to find a better way to live, and knowing that makes it worthwhile for me.

In recovery, my surroundings and my work have improved beyond what I could have imagined. So has my behavior. The smallest things prove the evolution: if I’m going to be late, I call and take responsibility, rather than lying or making excuses. I am concentrated on my art and on the wonderful people in my sobriety communities. And most of all, I'm proud of myself for having the courage to tell my story.

Chris Beckman, a former cast member of MTV’s The Real World: Chicago, and author of the book Clean: A New Generation in Recovery Speaks Out, has toured throughout the country speaking to high school and college audiences about his addiction and recovery.

This article is published in Counselor,The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, December 2005, v.6, n.6, pp.20.

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