Recovery can be neatly divided into 2 separate stages:

1) Early recovery
2) Long term sobriety

I have to give credit to Ernie Larsen for this idea, he came up with it first and he is right on the money. In his book he talks about “stage 2 recovery” as being the second part of recovery, after you have pretty much got the basics of staying clean and sober down.

Early recovery = your first few months or even years of sobriety, when you are still figuring out how to stay clean and sober on a day to day basis.

Long term recovery (stage 2 recovery) = the rest of your life, when you have already figured out how to stay clean and sober and now you just have to maintain your recovery.

It is my belief that you should treat each stage differently, as each one requires a different approach. Here is what worked for me in my recovery:

My early recovery – I checked in to a detox and residential treatment center and stayed there for a few weeks. From there, they suggested long term treatment and I went immediately to a long term treatment center where I lived for the next 20 months. This turned out to be a great decision for me, and I credit my success in early recovery with attending a long term treatment center.

Essentially, long term treatment set me up for success in a number of areas that are critical for early recovery:

* Strong support system – as you are living with peers in recovery who are trying to help each other recover.
* Emphasis on networking – as the policy at this particular long term treatment center was to do 90 meetings in the first 90 days
* Emphasis on structure - which was much needed at the time in my life, though it was not a militant environment or anything….it provided just enough structure to set me on the right path.
* A variety of recovery strategies -including group therapy, one-on-one counseling sessions, 12 step meetings, and so on. Having a variety of strategies helped me to find what worked best for me in my own recovery.

So those key points are all well suited for early recovery. Find what works best for you. Find a strong support system and do a lot of networking with others in recovery. If you don’t know how to do this then you can take a shortcut and get involved with daily 12 step meetings.

Next, we will take a look at the 2nd stage of recovery and see what strategies work best for that.