The Recovery Story I'm Afraid to Share

I've been lying about how I recovered from long covid

One truth that I’ve been afraid to tell: I recovered from long covid when I stopped trying to recover.

When people ask me how I healed, I usually lie. I cite a combination of time, low-dose naltrexone, energy management, and meditation. 

I rarely mention acceptance. 

When I do mention the a-word, I hedge. I hide behind disclaimers like, “I know it's a little woo woo” or “my therapist told me to try it.”

Why do I lie or hedge? Because I’ve caught the furtive look between doctor-friends. Because those friends aren’t wrong (I can’t find any clinical evidence to support my claim, either). Because without a tangible act to point to or hold in my hands (like an orange bottle with a child seal), recovery feels tenuous. And because I’ve been blocked from recovery groups and unfollowed after suggesting that sufferers try acceptance.  

You’d probably lie, too!

Sure, writers have explored acceptance as a way to reclaim joy and agency while living with chronic illness. 

And yes, I’ve read about the acceptance paradox and believe the psychological argument that acceptance is a precondition to change. 

And okay, if I squint, I can chart a logical path from acceptance to healing by way of stress reduction and neural plasticity. Reducing the negatives (like inflammation, cortisol, and pain perception) and dialing up the positives (like immune function and autonomic nervous system regulation) had to help me. But doesn’t that logical path resemble whatever the reverse of death by a thousand cuts is? It sure doesn’t scream ‘spontaneous healing’ to me. 

I’ve yet to find hard data that supports what I’ve experienced: when I finally accepted that my limitations might be for life, the shackles of those limitations unlocked. 

Pre-acceptance, I was a prisoner to a two hour morning routine and obsessively researching treatments. I was a puddle of desperation, pinning my hopes on the next doctor, supplement, breathwork technique and the occasional psychic. Post-acceptance, I prioritized warm sun on my skin and going to the park because I liked it (and not because grounding is apparently good for me). 

Basically, I stopped using my four hours a day of energy to “get better” and started trying to enjoy my life. 

But my claim reminds me of the book Letting Go: The Pathway to Surrender, which is full of supernatural claims and is largely dismissed as pseudoscience. The author argues that one can rid themselves of even the most serious of ailments by surrendering to negative emotions. Highlights include a patient’s “severely sprained ankle [that] healed itself in minutes,” cases of athlete's foot resolving via “continual cancellation” of the belief that athlete’s foot is correlated with hotel room floors, and the author’s own healing of poor eyesight by removing the glasses that he had worn for years and driving a vehicle home blindly.* 

If this sounds dangerous, don’t worry! “As soon as it was vital to see something, it would be seen.” This includes the edge of a literal cliff that “was made visible just as it was necessary to see it.”*

It’s no wonder I hid my spontaneous healing from most of the world. 

But here’s the catch: when I’m actually honest, I’m rewarded for it. When I’m chatting with someone else who has recovered, the truth tends to break through. I’ll tiptoe right up to the cliff of the truth and they’ll jump off with me, exclaiming “yeah, it was the same for me too.” This either happens because there are lots of people out there who’ve experienced my same brand of acceptance or there’s someone upstairs who is nudging me towards accepting the truth of my own experience. 

This happened three days ago, in a conversation with a guy who ran a marathon after he recovered. 

I’m not aiming to run a marathon. But I wonder, if I had been honest with myself earlier (when we’re lying to others, we’re usually lying to ourselves, too), could I have biked 100 miles sooner? Ran a 10K faster? Or better yet, nudged someone else towards the path of healing?

I’ve wasted enough time lying. Acceptance healed me. 

*I made the embarrassing mistake of imploring a friend to read this book after I’d read only the first few chapters. She got to the glasses scene before I did and grew concerned for my well-being.