When I first got the account, my cell phone was a recovery method. Later in life I imported the cell into google voice... thus when the recovery codes failed, there was no other option.

Sorry, I meant an external recovery method. Another e-mail address or a phone number.

Another email address is useless.

Another phone humber only works if you didn't lose that phone.

Why would another email address be useless?

Google doesn't allow you to recover a Google account using only your recovery email address. Despite its name, the recovery email address is not used to recover Google accounts AFAICT, it's only used to receive notifications about security-related events.

I had email address X (gmail) that I hadn't logged into for a long time. One day I tried to log in to it. Correct password, but Google, for some reason, simply decided there's something suspicious about my login and blocked it. X had Y as the "recovery email", and I had access to Y, and I indeed received an email from Google sent to Y that it blocked a suspicious login to X. However, THERE WAS NO WAY TO USE Y TO GAIN ACCESS TO X. Google simply did not offer that option for X, and I had no idea why.

This is not a recovery address, it's a lie. Its notifications address, mostly used to force us to draw some parts of our social graph for them.