It is important to find your own unique path in recovery. What does this mean?

It means that if you simply attempt to follow a recovery program without taking ownership of it and making it into your own then you are setting yourself up for failure. This means that you have to get active in the way you design your own life. If someone tells you to go to 12 step meetings and you simply follow what they tell you then there is no long term success in that. You might stay clean and sober for a while but unless you start taking deliberate action in order to push yourself towards growth in recovery then you are not going to stay clean.

Now understand that this can mean a number of things. For example, it might mean that you will make 12 step meetings a big part of your recovery and you might pursue the meetings and the fellowship that comes along with the meetings as an avenue of growth in your life. This is fine if this is your chosen path. I have one friend who has made this his mission in recovery and it is serving him quite well. He sponsors several people and still attends a meeting almost every single day, even after 8 years of sobriety. This is his path and he is living it to the best of his ability, trying to provide addiction help to others. But realize that he chose this path consciously after having had it suggested to him.

In other words, he did it as a suggestion at first, but over time he owned it as his own path of growth. He made it into his own deliberate path of recovery. There are other people who are attempting to work a program of recovery but they are not thinking for themselves or taking action in their lives based on passion or purpose for living. They are like robots who attend meetings and use it as a sick form of group therapy. They dump on meetings and complain and whine about their lives and use it as a sick tool to get some relief in their life. They do this just enough so that they do not end up relapsing. This is no way to work a recovery.

The alternative to this hum-drum existence is to find that in recovery which makes you passionate. Find your purpose. If you can’t find it, then start by trying to help others in recovery. If you can do this consistently and make it into a habit then you will probably find your stride in recovery and good things will start happening for you.