The Art of Recovery - Blog from Alex Mazonowicz

Written By Phoenix Futures

I don’t remember the first time I heard Pet Sounds, but I do remember the first time I really listened to it. I was on a ferry crossing over the Bosphorus in Istanbul, and for the first time since the age of 14, I had not drunk alcohol or used drugs in more than a week.  

In fact, I hadn’t drunk alcohol for 2 months and except for the prescribed drugs to help with my first weeks off the bottle, I also hadn’t taken any mind-altering substances. I was scared. I had support, yet I was still scared. 

I had been living in a foreign country for 8 years. My social circle was entirely based on heavy drinking and drug use, and I was living from disaster to disaster. Prior to putting down the drink, everything in my life was on a path to destruction. My finances, my employment, my relationship and my body. 

Addiction stole so much from me. I don’t need to list it all, but in the last years of my drinking it had stolen the greatest joy of my life – music. Yet on this ferry ride, 2 months into my first recovery, fear subsided for a moment, and I began to rediscover life. In the first arpeggios of The Beach Boys’ ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, I found a joy that I’d lost so long ago I’d forgotten it existed. Floating on the water, drenched in the morning sun and Brian Wilson’s exquisitely arranged harmonies, I found a small sliver of serenity. 

In the following weeks, months and years, sobriety slowly started to give me back things that I had lost. I bought a white Gibson Melody Maker electric guitar. In time, I joined a band, I made a record, and I started to write.  

My second recovery started when I joined the Brighton-based New Note Orchestra in 2020. New Note Orchestra describes itself as being “the first orchestra in the world designed to support people affected by addiction.” We are a collection of musicians who rehearse, record and perform regularly. We play anywhere from the local church to the Royal Opera House.  

More than just a music collective, it's a support group, a community and it’s an advocate for change. We entertain and connect with audiences, and in doing so, we all heal together. The New Note Orchestra is unique, but it isn’t alone. Throughout the country, there’s a burgeoning movement of groups and individuals using the arts in recovery. The movement is growing, and it’s international.  

Art is often undervalued in society, but we believe art can play a crucial role in recovery. That’s why in 2023, we started Performing Recovery, a Community Interest Company dedicated to supporting and connecting arts practitioners, as well as promoting arts as part of recovery.  

Arts practices have been shown to significantly reduce stress1, and stress plays a considerable role in substance use disorders, as research demonstrates2. Community and social support structures have also been shown to significantly help in long-term recovery.3 Arts programmes, such as music and theatre groups, help to create strong social bonds and foster long-term collaboration. Moreover, many people with substance and behavioural use disorders and even in recovery have experienced trauma. Art is a powerful storytelling tool that helps people process trauma without having to relive it.  

Finally, art can be one of the most powerful tools in the fight against stigma. As audiences experience the incredible performances, visual arts and written words of people impacted by substance use and behavioural disorders, their ideas of what it means to be a person in recovery from adverse life experiences shift and become more nuanced. We are humanised and empowered as we regain control of our own stories and demonstrate what a joyful, creative life can look like. 

I don’t call joining the orchestra my second recovery because I’d relapsed since my first one – I hadn’t. It’s my second recovery because of the change that I had seen in myself. When I walked through the door to the rehearsal in 2020, I walked in as an alcoholic. But when in 2023, I walked onto the stage at the Royal Opera House with the New Note Orchestra, I walked on as a musician.  

There is much stigma that surrounds the process of recovery. Depictions in the media of 12-step groups, rehabilitation centres, or even individuals following their own path to recovery are often dark and depressing. I used to consider sobriety to be punishment for overindulgence or lack of willpower. I was secretive about my own recovery, in some circles addiction was seen to be moral failings, but in artistic circles, not drinking or using drugs was considered to be boring or the antithesis of creativity.  

Even when talking about my experiences in recovery, so often, I have been asked to paint dark pictures of using and talk about my struggles. But this isn’t what it has been like for me. My recovery is joyful and creative. That I have had to examine myself and my addiction has been an inspiration for storytelling.  

Talking about recovery or sobriety does not have to be a warning to others, a story of pity or shock-filled sceptical. I no longer want to hide that I’m an addict. I am grateful for my addiction, because without it, I might never have found the incredible community I have now. Had I not been an alcoholic and gone through the period of recovery, I might never have found the New Note Orchestra. 

Performing Recovery is a quarterly magazine, free to read online. We feature interviews and work from people impacted by substance use and behavioural disorders in the UK and internationally. We also feature creative writing in the magazine, as well as music on our podcast. From poets to filmmakers, rappers to painters, with every issue we are finding more and more people and groups finding the power of art. Our hope is that by bringing them together, more people can be inspired to create, collaborate and recover.  

 

Performing Recovery is an organisation that supports, connects and promotes artists, arts groups and arts practices in the world of recovery from substance use and compulsive behavioural disorders. It publishes a quarterly magazine, podcasts and a newsletter, and it runs live and online events. Performing Recovery is for individuals or groups who are involved in, or interested in, recovery arts. 

 

 

Phoenix Futures
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