How you Can Stop Drinking and Start Living Recovery

Many people get mixed up about recovering from drug or alcohol addiction, because they think it is all about elminating the chemicals. 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 don't, as getting good outcomes in sobriety takes a ton of motivation and work.

One of the hard truths about recovery is that it takes a monumental effort in the beginning. If you want to make it in early recovery and build a new life for yourself then you have to make a tremendous effort at first. 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 don't put in an absolutely 100 percent effort at early recovery then you are headed for trouble.

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 will not work for the newcomer and it will cause them to relapse. 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. The things we did to stay clean and sober at 30 days in the program are not going to keep us sober at the 5 year mark....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 this, but the level of dedication and hard work you must put forth as a new person in recovery is extremely large. Don't imagine that you can find some magic loophole to get to the serenity and peace that your sponsor has. That serenity was earned. This is not some free ride that any addict can just achieve without hard work.