Stop Drinking and Start Living a Real Life in Recovery
Many people get mixed up about recovering from drug or alcohol addiction, because they think it is all about elminating the chemicals. They believe the main point is in getting off the drugs and then coming up with a strategy for dealing with future triggers that might lead to a relapse.
If recovery were that easy then we would likely see many more people find success with it. Unfortunately we do not, because achieving good results in recovery takes an awful lot of effort.
On of the harder truths to swallow in early recovery is the intense level of effort needed to stay clean at first. If you want to make it in early recovery and build a new life for yourself then you have to make a tremendous effort at first. Many people have discovered in life that a decent effort in most things will give them decent results, but this is not true when it comes to overcoming addiction. If you don’t put in an absolutely 100 percent effort at early recovery then you are headed for trouble.
Now this can be particularly confusing because we often times will look to the seasoned veterans of recovery who have multiple years of sobriety and try to emulate their life. This will not work for the newcomer and it will cause them to relapse. If your sponsor has been clean and sober for several years and you attempt to do what he does to stay clean then you are going to relapse. Why? Because as we remain clean in recovery we start changing and growing in different ways. The things that helped us get clean will not keep us clean 10 years from now….we need to keep growing and evolving as we progress in recovery. If we want to understand how to stop drinking then we need to realize that we will change as we progress in recovery.
Not only this, but the level of dedication and hard work you must put forth as a new person in recovery is extremely large. Don’t imagine that you can find some magic loophole to get to the serenity and peace that your sponsor has. That serenity was earned. It is not a magic gift that you can claim without putting in the footwork.
