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.