“Hope is the thing with feathers,” wrote Emily Dickinson. Maybe. But for many of us who’ve struggled with addiction, trauma, or just the daily torment of being a human being in a world that doesn’t care about your pain until it makes a spectacle—it hasn’t always felt like a bird. Sometimes hope is a ghost. Sometimes it’s a tease. Sometimes, hope hurts more than it helps.
The Origins of Hope
Epistemologically, the word hope comes from the Old English hopa, meaning “confidence in the future,” derived from the Proto-Germanic hupōn, which carried the connotation “to trust” or “expect.” [Oxford English Dictionary, 2023]. The modern usage often implies the desire for something to happen, paired with the belief that it might. But therein lies the contradiction—hope presumes a future. For someone in early recovery or enduring ongoing trauma, the future can feel inaccessible, even fictional. The promise that things might get better can feel like salt in the wound of what isn’t.
As philosopher Gabriel Marcel described, hope “is not the same as desire” and isn’t passive—it requires presence. Without this grounding, hope can become what psychologist Dan Tomasulo calls toxic positivity, the insistence that one must always be optimistic—even when it’s untethered from truth. [[Tomasulo, Learned Hopefulness, 2020]]
Hopelessness in Recovery
In Alcoholics Anonymous, the word “hopeless” shows up repeatedly—not as a defect, but as a necessary moment of clarity. “We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end… or to accept spiritual help” (AA, p. 25).
Whether you read that spiritually or secularly, the meaning is the same: you cannot recover alone. And in that surrender, hope becomes possible—not as fantasy, but as cooperation. In group recovery, “hope” is handed to you by someone who’s been where you are. Someone whose life says, this isn’t the end.
When Hope Is Just a Wish
But let’s be honest—hope can also become a trap. I’ve seen it mutate into a longing for a second life to arrive fully intact, without pain, effort, or responsibility. In trauma work, this is a well-documented defense: a dissociative fantasy of the “idealized future self” that temporarily shields the psyche from despair. [[Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, 2014]] [[Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 1992]]
This is particularly common in those experiencing Complex PTSD, where survivors construct “rescue fantasies” or visions of future redemption as a coping mechanism. But left unchecked, it keeps them tethered to a version of self that doesn’t yet—and may never—exist.
I’ve known that kind of hope too. Mine was synthetic. It came in the form of MDMA wrapped in toilet paper, bombed at social events to manage anxiety. I wasn’t hoping—I was escaping. A chemically-induced moment where dread was paused. Not healed.
The Opposite of Hope: Rumination
Rumination—the repeated, passive focus on distress—has been linked to increased risk of depression and relapse in those with SUD (Substance Use Disorder). [[Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008]] It keeps us circling the past or obsessing over the fantasy of a future. It is, in many ways, the opposite of hope—but also its dark twin. Both remove us from the present. Both delay the work.
In early recovery, I found relief not in hope, but in presence. I meditated—not to escape, but to observe. To sit with the mind that told me meditation wasn’t for me. And in that sitting, I saw the loop. The delusions of a comeback. The fantasy of reclaiming an ego that had already died. What arrived in its place wasn’t a new life, but a simple fact: this life matters, exactly as it is.
Hope as Practice, Not Feeling
The only place that’s ever mattered—space-time present—is where the Big Book quietly guides us by page 86. “On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead.” We review the day before. We plan the day ahead. No time travel. No wishcraft.
Hope, if it has any real value, must become practice. Milestones. Daily acts. Real steps. Not the hope that life will be delivered, but the participation in its building. We can’t wait for a second life to arrive—we get to build something real, fragile, beautiful, now.
Eventually, even the word “hope” begins to fade—not because it failed, but because it did its job. It got us on the train. But once you’re moving, once you’re living, being is enough.
The only path forward came not from imagining waterfalls or dream jobs—but from meditation. Not the pretty kind. The gritty kind. The kind where I sat with the voice that said, “This isn’t for you.” And I stayed anyway. That was the beginning of real hope. The kind that doesn’t arrive as an emotion but as a practice.
I started listening in meetings. Not fantasizing. Not constructing a comeback narrative. Just listening. And when I did, I wanted the life that was actually happening—not the one I used to dream about. The one that was messy. The one where I was still rebuilding. The one that was real.
Hope, if it has value, must be tied to action. To a plan. To milestones that let us enjoy the slow creation of something new. Not the arrival of a fully formed second life, but the building of a first one we finally want to be in.
And eventually, the work no longer feels like effort. It just is.
Selected References:
- Alcoholics Anonymous. (1939). Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism.
- Dickinson, E. (1891). Poems by Emily Dickinson.
- Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror.
- Marcel, G. (1951). Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope.
- Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B. E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Rethinking Rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5), 400–424.
- Tomasulo, D. (2020). Learned Hopefulness: The Power of Positivity to Overcome Depression.
- Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.
- Oxford English Dictionary. (2023). Entry for “Hope.”