Being “Clean”

Words are weird. They hold a lot of meaning, power, and potential for both great things and terrible things; and at the same time they don’t mean anything. Just sounds we’ve assigned meaning to. Yet one word that I still feel my skin crawl to hear people use is the word “clean” when referring to the abstinence of drugs and alcohol.

It’s understandable why it’s in so many people of the recovery communities’ lexicon, between 12 step groups and the widespread habit of referring to the results of a drug test as either dirty or clean. It’s so common that people outside of the recovery communities are used to using such vocabulary, most likely not even thinking twice about it. The word “clean” is obviously used in plenty of different contexts — but the common thread is an undertone of a sense of purity. Referring to someone’s background, STI status, or using the word as a synonym for innocent.

Having a clean criminal record, a clean drug test or STI status, a clean driving record. These are all frameworks that set the expectation of cleanliness and purity as standard, and anything less than that deems someone as being less-than. Dirty.

I’m not here to say the word clean is a bad word or that it should be replaced in all of these contexts. I’m here saying that continuing to use the word clean when we really mean abstinent is only further perpetuating the stigmatization of drug use and people who use drugs. When people do achieve abstinence, there can be a self-imposed expectation or desire to achieve additional levels of abstinence, purity…