Addiction Recovery in Action

For those of us working in the addiction treatment field, it’s practically impossible to determine who will recover. Recovery itself is difficult to identify, in the sense it’s not always a case of not using drugs ever again. Recovery can be messy. Many people who finally recovered long term and never used drugs again went through several forms of treatment or interventions before they took the necessary actions to recover. It’s sort of like people who go on diets then have several episodes of slipping before they maintain the diet on a regular, long term basis — except when people go back to drugs the risks and consequences are more imminent and deadly for the most part. One thing we can determine with high accuracy is that certain actions lead to a straight line recovery at a much greater rate. We just don’t know who’s going to take the actions and who’s not. It’s not always the ones we’d expect who take recovery actions — many times it’s the ones who have the hardest time in treatment.

We see clients who talk a good game and, if you just listened to their words, you’d think they’re making great changes and are surely on their way to recovery. The crazy part is most of these people are sincere — they mean what they’re saying at the moment, but when you dig a little deeper and ask the right questions you realize they aren’t taking any actions that give them the best chance at long term, stable recovery. They haven’t established a support network – they aren’t dealing with emotional issues that can lead a person to relapse – they haven’t made the necessary changes with people, places and things that are associated with drug use (and, of course, we’re considering alcohol a drug) – they haven’t taken the steps to improve their employment, like they said they wanted to do – they didn’t attend the counseling session with their spouse that they agreed was needed in order to have the best chance at long term recovery – the list goes on.

There’s a trap people in treatment fall into, and it’s fairly common. A person comes into treatment, they begin to hear others discuss their problems, it hits home with them, and all of a sudden a light comes on and the person begins to think about how better life would be without all the consequences suffered from addiction. They begin to feel like they’ve got it licked, but it’s all a pink cloud experience, and if they don’t take the difficult actions to deal with the past and truly manage the future for recovery, when they leave treatment and are back in reality the pink cloud dissipates and they fall back into drug use.

We warn people about the pink cloud experience. We talk incessantly about addiction recovery in action, but some just don’t believe they need to do everything suggested, so they pick the easiest actions which are mostly in their head and not made real in action. If they relapse, many try again and realize they didn’t take the necessary actions before, so they start following the advice they received in treatment. On the other hand, some relapse and don’t come back — they likely feel like it’s hopeless and just give up trying to recover. An addict should never give up. Valuable lessons can be learned in a relapse, and it’s never too late to change.

Here is some more I’ve written about action in recovery.