Consider your whole life and all of the areas in it. You have different aspects of your being that you can work on and try to grow, such as physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and so on. Each of these areas is important for balance in recovery, yet many mainstream recovery programs neglect certain aspects of this and focus heavily on spirituality instead. The spiritual aspect is important but it is just one piece of the puzzle. If you want to enjoy balance in recovery and build a strong foundation for sobriety then you should consider all aspects of your life, including those that go beyond the spiritual. For example, you might work on your fitness and nutrition, or your relationships and emotional balance. So don’t get stuck in your recovery, start exploring different methods of growth and development so that you can achieve some balance in your recovery and start growing holistically.

1) Taking care of self – this is a big thing, especially in early recovery when our self esteem might be low. We need to force ourselves to take good care of ourselves in every way–physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and so on. This is part of how we build self esteem in recovery and start feeling good about ourselves.

2) Push yourself to grow or learn something new - if you can do this every day, it will help you to fight complacency and keep you grounded in recovery.

3) Helping other addicts – nothing is more powerful in my opinion. In fact, this is the strongest predictor of success in recovery….if you are working with other addicts on a regular basis, this provides huge insurance against possible relapse.

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.

1) Go to treatment
2) Go to 12 step meetings every day
3) Call our sponsor or other recovering addicts
4) Study recovery literature or write out step work

And so on. These are the kinds of things that are generally suggested to newcomers in recovery. Why? Because they work. They help people to get clean.

But what happens after a recovering addict has made it to 3 months clean, to 6 months clean, to 2 years clean…..are they supposed to keep doing these same things, over and over again? Are we basically supposed to stay in “beginner mode?”

In my opinion this is not healthy. Now, there are some in recovery who will argue that we should “stick with the basics,” and that it is important for us to keep visiting these same recovery tactics, regardless of how long we have been clean and sober. I disagree with this based on my own personal experience, and also based on what I have observed in others.

The reason for this is because people seem to get stuck in early recovery. They follow the 12 step program and end up using the daily meetings as a form of group therapy (not how Bill W. intended it to be, mind you). Some of these people in recovery get stuck in the same patterns, go to the same meetings over and over again, and basically continue to exist in recovery without making much real growth in their life. This is not the ideal way to live in recovery. If you are just treading water, attempting to stay clean and sober, then what kind of recovery is that? Not a very good one, in my opinion.

Better is to challenge yourself to grow in your recovery and evolve as a spiritual being. What does this mean? It means that instead of dumping your issues and whining in a 12 step meeting every day, you should be spending your energy in more productive ways as you progress in recovery. One way to do this would be to offer addiction help to others in recovery. You might also seek to find new ways to grow outside of the boundaries of traditional recovery. For example, the 12 step program generally focuses on spiritual growth alone. This is a shortsighted viewpoint and to truly recover you need to heal your life in other ways as well, including physically, emotionally, socially, and so on.

1) I choose to go to rehab – not everyone chooses rehab, and many will stubbornly avoid the idea altogether, insisting that they can do it on their own. Most can’t. We need help in order to recover. I was fortunate enough to give rehab another chance (I had already been twice before and failed to stay sober).

2) I followed up with proper aftercare - this was where I had failed in the past. Treatment centers had advised for me to go to long term treatment and I refused. When that happened I ended up drinking and using drugs again. Finally, though, I became willing to take their advice and attend long term treatment. This was the best decision I ever made it and it set me up for success in recovery. I don’t think I would be clean and sober today had I not gone to long term treatment to get addiction help.

At the time, long term treatment sounded like a death sentence. It was nothing of the sort. It was an awesome opportunity and I highly recommend it. I thought it would be like jail, and that I would lose my freedom if I checked into long term rehab. Instead, I gained back the whole world, and truly became free as they taught me a new way to live.

3) I shifted from a dependence on group therapy towards a life of holistic growth – what does that mean? It means that after I did about a year of 12 step meetings (and used them as my primary recovery strategy), I decided to start looking beyond that and exploring a new way to recover.

Instead of going to meetings every day and talking about my struggles in life, I shifted my focus to one of personal growth. I became more goal oriented and started challenging myself to achieve new things. I also focused on learning as a way to grow in recovery.

These 3 things all made a huge difference for me in recovery. I have seen many others fail who might have benefited from these ideas…..

Early recovery starts out a little bit before you even get clean and sober. You’re in the process of making the decision to change your life. Then you actually go through with the decision and take real action. This launches you into a roller coaster of an emotional ride that we can only describe as being a wild, up and down ride. Early recovery is like that. Your emotions are all over the place, because you are finally feeling them again (seemingly for the first time), and you are basically in shock from simply being sober.

Many people will spend this first part of their early recovery in a treatment center, and that is a fairly good idea for a number of reasons. For one thing, you will definitely benefit from having a safe environment with which to take your first steps towards a life of sobriety, without being tempted to relapse right away. Second of all, treatment can be helpful because you will receive a lot of addiction help from all of the peer support that you will get while in rehab. You will also benefit from the counselors and therapists there who can help to educate you about recovery and help guide you towards a new way to live. Early recovery is all about absorbing new information, and so you need to have teachers who can guide you in this early stage.

Long term recovery

Now contrast this early stage with long term recovery. In long term sobriety, you are no longer depending on your peer support group to keep you clean and sober like you were in the early stages. At this point you have probably learned quite a bit, you have a few years (or more) of clean time under your belt, and in fact you are probably actively helping other newcomers in recovery in some way. This being the case, what you have to do in order to stay clean at this point is not the same things that you were doing in early recovery.

The fact is that you have to change, grow, and progress as you grow personally in recovery. Anything less than this and you risk sliding back towards your old habits.

The real fact of the matter is that complacency is your biggest obstacle in long term recovery, so you have to take deliberate action on a consistent basis in order to keep growing. This means you need to form healthy habits that utilize sound recovery strategies, such as caring for self, helping others, and pushing yourself to grow in new ways.

Now those who are heavily involved with the 12 step programs will declare that AA and NA meetings are not group therapy. They distinguish a difference between the meetings and group therapy, saying that in meetings, they “share their experience, strength, and hope with each other.” They claim that this makes a 12 step meeting vastly different from group therapy.

In reality, they are not so different. From a broad perspective, 12 step meetings are one kind of group therapy.

Now this is not to say that 12 step meetings are not helpful, or that you should abandon them completely. But for real addiction help in your life, you have to look beyond group therapy and find other means by which you can push yourself to grow as a person.

Consider the fact that many people who start attending 12 step meetings eventually relapse. In fact, if you really look at the numbers, the vast majority of those who attend 12 step meetings will relapse. Even the published numbers from AA’s ten year census data shows that long term success rates cannot possibly be better than 5 percent. This is not said to discourage anyone, but merely to point out the limitations of group therapy as a recovery solution. A 12 step fellowship makes an excellent support system for early recovery, but doesn’t necessarily provide the best motivation for long term, personal growth in recovery.

I know this from personal experience because I have seen so many people relapse while trying to stick to the 12 step program. I have seen others who have branched out from the strict dogma of 12 step wisdom and found success through other means in their lives. This is not to say that you need to quit going to meetings. What I am saying is that you might want to stop depending on meetings, because that is actually a weakness that is not necessary for you to hold on to in long term recovery.

The freedom that you get from defining your own creative life in recovery is awesome. It is not so much that you are free from 12 step programs, but that you are free to live your life how you have purposefully created it in recovery, regardless of whether or not that includes participation in the fellowship. Seriously, I am not knocking the 12 step programs here. They are powerful and helpful and you should use them and participate if that is your calling. Just realize that there are limitations involved with growing in those programs, especially when you are focusing on long term, holistic growth.

To create your own life in recovery, look beyond the 12 step solution. I don’t care what you do. Go running. Wear magnetic bracelets. Take a class in nutrition. Recovery is more than just spiritual. It is holistic.

It might be helpful for other people if they know what kind of mistakes I made early on. If you can avoid these, your recovery will be stronger for it.

Mistake #1 - I waited too long to start helping other addicts, and this is really the cornerstone of solid recovery. If you are reaching out to others in recovery on a regular basis, then it will be very hard for you to relapse. It is not likely that you will do so if you are involved with giving others addiction help.

Mistake #2 – I thought that the answers were out there and that I was on a spiritual quest for ultimate knowledge. This led me astray for quite a while and I thought that the whole point of recovery was to experience a spiritual conversion of some sort. This is actually not the case–the point of recovery is to start living a real life again, a meaningful life filled with passion and purpose. If you can manage that, this is a spiritual experience. But I was seeking something beyond this gift of freedom, when in fact it was right under my nose the whole time.

Mistake #3 - I stayed stuck in the basics for too long. My sponsor was encouraging me to go back to college and finish my degree, and he also pushed me to get a job. I actually resisted both ideas at the time, even though I eventually came around and did both of those things. But I was hesitant to do so because I was sort of isolated in my little recovery world, and I wanted to just go to meetings every day and focus on my recovery. I can look back now and see that I was clearly holding myself back from exploring life out of fear, not focusing on my recovery. Recovery is life. Don’t confuse recovery support strategies with your actual life (though there may be a lot of overlap in the early stages, which is fine).

Mistake #4 – I thought that a program could allow me to recover from addiction, when in fact I had addicts relapsing all around me. I eventually figured out that recovery is an inside job….you have to find your own path or you are not going to make it. Traditional recovery programs can only take you so far.

I’m going to try and do you a favor and clue you in early.  If you’re in early recovery or just thinking about getting clean, here are some things you can expect:

1) Everyone underestimates the task of staying clean at first - so be aware that nearly everyone who tries to get clean has to try at least a few times before they even make it to 30 days clean.  The task at hand is monumental and nearly everyone underestimates it.

This is because of conditioning.  When we approach other tasks in life we expect that a modest effort will produce modest results.  With recovery this is not true.  A modest effort will ensure relapse.  You have to swing for the fences.

In other words: It’s going to be difficult.

2) Networking becomes less effective over time – in the beginning, having support is great.  It’s all about helping each other to stay clean, right?  What they never tell you is that this will only carry you so far in recovery – then you have to start creating a new life for yourself.  The extent to which you depend on others for your recovery is the extent to which you are vulnerable to relapse.

In other words: Recovery is your personal responsibility.  You will find that you cannot outsource this.

3) All the sayings and slogans are wrong or at least misguided – “meeting makers make it”….oh really?  Then why do so many keep showing up and getting their one day tag over and over again?  Some of the sayings might be helpful for you at times but beware that they are edging out your ability to have some original thinking.  Find what works for you in recovery and apply it.  Repeating cliches like a robot in 12 step meetings does not keep someone clean.

In other words: Learn to think for yourself.  Your long term sobriety depends on it.

4) Abstinence is the baseline; true recovery is in creation – what the heck does that mean?  It means that quitting the drugs and the booze is just a start, and the real path to long term recovery comes from creating a new life for yourself.  Recovery is about action.  Living is about doing stuff.  If all you do is give up the drugs, you’re going to be in for a struggle.

In other words: Find your passion in recovery.  This might take some time.  But it’s worth the journey.

5) Spiritual growth is not the solution - holistic growth is the solution.  Holistic meaning “your whole self” – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social.  Our addiction affected every part of our being so why would the solution just be spiritual?  It’s not.  The solution is bigger than that.  Therefore the optimal approach to a successful recovery is a holistic one in which you push yourself to grow in several areas of your life.

In other words: Recovery is about growth and learning, not just spiritual principles and meetings.

6) Quitting drugs and alcohol is not elimination, but instead is a structural change - This is especially true if you are young.  The causes of teenage drinking and drug use are not so clear cut as you would think. What we want is not to simply eliminate the drugs and alcohol from our lives, but instead to make sweeping structural changes.  Why?  Because that is what it will take to make the changes really stick.  Structural change means big changes, from the people we hang out with every day to how we spend our free time and possibly even what job we work at.  They have a saying in traditional recovery: “The only thing you have to change is everything.”  They are talking about big structural changes that impact your entire life.  If  you are young and have heavy peer influence then how can you expect to remain clean without getting new friends?  You can’t.  Plain and simple.  That is why structural change is so important.

In other words: A bunch of little changes won’t cut it.  You need big change to recover.  One short cut to this would be long term treatment.

7) Growth in recovery is almost never linear - This is misleading because in so many other endeavors of our lives, growth is fairly constant and linear.  But in recovery we struggle for a long time in early recovery without seeing any huge gains.  Some people are still fairly miserable for the first few months or even years of sobriety.  If you are on a path of holistic growth then what will happen is all of the benefits will start kicking in over the long term.  That means you are going to have to be patient in order to reap the real benefits of recovery.  But when they come, they will come in spades, so it pays to keep on trudging through early recovery.

In other words: Understand that growth will be slow in early recovery, but will accelerate as you maintain sobriety over the long term.  The rewards will kick in if you are patient.

Everyone says that recovery is simple but not easy. This is false.  Recovery is complicated – Let’s back up a second here.  Addiction is complicated.  You did not become addicted to drugs and alcohol overnight.  Instead, you were made into an addict over time.  We self medicated for a variety of reasons and covered  up different emotions with our using and so on.  Our lives became a tangled up mish-mash of drug addiction.  Not only that, but our addiction affected us mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, and so on.  Therefore, the solution is necessarily complicated as well.  If we want to grow in recovery and truly overcome addiction then we have to address all of those areas of our lives.  This means we need holistic growth that addresses the whole person.

In other words: Addiction is complicated.  Recovery is therefore complicated as well.  That is why we need a holistic approach that addresses our entire person.

9) There are 2 stages of recovery – It makes sense to break recovery into 2 stages: early recovery and long term recovery.  They are very different and you must approach them differently.  Early recovery might consist of the first 90 days or so.  For some people it might be up to the first 2 years.  We are talking about the initial detox period followed by the overwhelming task of learning how to live again.  In this stage you will typically have thoughts of using every single day.  This is an intense learning stage.  In long term recovery, we are still learning of course, but not so intensely any more.  We also have days where we do not even have a single thought of using drugs.  Our focus shifts from one of learning to one of growth.  This is an important idea because many people stay stuck in the first stage of recovery without transitioning to real growth in long term sobriety.  In other words they treat themselves as babies in the recovery game and never push themselves to really grow holistically.

In other words: Recognize that there are 2 stages and act accordingly.  Push yourself to transition to the second stage if you have not done so already.  Recovery is about living.

10) The number one enemy in long term recovery is complacency - In long term recovery, the main enemy is no longer resentments.  Instead it is complacency.  Your task is to grow holistically and create the life you really want for yourself.  What is your gift to the world?  How can you reach out and help others with your talents?  This is the question that should drive  you in long term recovery and if you are working a good program then you will continue to push yourself to grow at this point.  Doing so is the best prevention against relapse.  This is how to overcome complacency – by pushing yourself to grow.

In other words: The only enemy in long term recovery is getting lazy.  You need to take continuous action and push yourself to keep learning and growing.  Do so and the rewards of recovery will continue to bless you.

Another helpful article from addiction help resource.