26 Feb Recovery is a Journey Not a Destination.
Recovery is a Journey Not a Destination.
By Shane Currin
If only substance abuse disorder could be solved by a one visit to a doctor or an occasional over the counter medication. The life-long fight with addiction or alcoholism is not that simple. There is no magic solution to an individual’s addiction problem. Even those who have obtained long-term recovery are still vulnerable to the perils of substance abuse. Recovery is a journey. By that meaning a constant action in which requires engagement daily. Individuals can subdue their substance use disorder by being an active participant in their recovery. The replacement of addiction is the constant pursuit of living and thriving in a life without substances through hard work, practice, and time.
Work
One of the most avoided aspects of recovery is the work it takes to consistently maintain it. You may hear recovery described as a gift but it is rather a paycheck received from tireless efforts and hard work. No one can give an individual recovery, they must work for it. Working on one’s self, career, relationships, education, etc. All fit into the scope of recovery, it is the constant pursuit of self and community improvement. This is why so many addicts are turned away from recovery in the early days; they begin to realize the amount of work it is going to take to get their lives back on track yet this time they will not have the crutch of substance abuse to help them along the way. Active substance abuse is living life in the wrong direction and early recovery can overwhelm with a daunting amount of lost time to recover. Those who achieve success in recovery do so because they put in the constant work it requires to maintain. Anyone who’s found the fulfillment recovery brings knows it’s no cakewalk and requires work.
No Quick Fix
In a world filled with instant access and immediate gratification, recovery is just not one of those things. There is no way to undo the wreckage and trama of substance abuse with some applications on a smartphone. As alcoholics and addicts live in a world of instant gratification and impulsivity recovery is fundamentally the exact opposite. It’s going to take time to build a life of recovery. To live a life of recovery is to understand that the solutions we seek don’t arrive when needed. Hard lessons, years in the making, tend to bombard the fragile beginning of recovery. Patience and resilience are only learned through each new problem of life. The solution materializes in long delays or odd ways.
Re-Learn
Most substances users have driven the vehicle of their life in such a wrong direction. Many of whom have to educate themselves on tasks that range from simple to vital. Some have never learned how to properly cook a meal or pay bills on time, while the crucial life skills like building healthy relationships with themselves and the people around them seem like such foreign concepts. The process of recovery requires the kind of willingness for an individual to admit that life before addiction was years of learning the wrong way to live. Going to a residential treatment center like Lion’s Gate Recovery is how addicts and alcoholics can begin the healing need to begin relearning life.
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