Stop Drinking and Start Living a Real Life in Recovery
Most people get confused when it comes to quitting drugs and alcohol, because they see it as a process of elimination. They think that the primary focus is on eliminating drug use and then on avoiding all of those triggers and urges that might pop up in our lives that might make us relapse.
If recovery were truly this simple then we would probably see much higher success rates. Unfortunately we do not, because achieving good results in recovery takes an awful lot of effort.
One the difficult truths about overcoming addiction is that you have to put forth a tremendous effort at the start of your journey. If you want to achieve a successful life of sobriety then you have to put forth a huge initial effort. Most people learn as they go through life that putting forth a modest effort will give them modest results, but this is not the case with addiction. If you approach early sobriety with anything less than a 100 percent effort, you are going to relapse.
This can be somewhat tricky because as newcomers in early recovery we will usually seek guidance from oldtimers in the program who have been around for a while and try to copy their strategies. This won’t work out well for someone new in recovery and it will probably make them go back to using. If your sponsor has 10 years of sobriety and as a newcomer you try to copy his lifestyle exactly then you are going to relapse. Why? Because we progress and change as we stay clean and sober. What got us clean and sober will not keep us clean and sober….we have to keep changing as we go along. 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 that, but the amount of up-front effort you need as a newcomer to recovery is just huge. Don’t think that you can somehow find a shortcut to the serenity and calm demeanor of that ten-year-sober sponsor of yours. That peace and serenity was not easy to come by, it was earned. This is not just some free ticket that can be achieved without putting in some effort.