Maintaining Sobriety

You cannot just slip and fall and accidentally become sober. If you are a real alcoholic then it is going to take a momentous decision on your part in order to break through the layers of denial that have kept you stuck in the cycle of addiction for all these years. That means that you have to basically hit bottom in your life and come to a moment of clarity. Many people will argue that this moment is a blessing and that there is no real way to induce it by our own devices. Others would claim that it is in fact possible to motivate ourselves to get clean and sober. I for one am not entirely sure as I feel that I was blessed with the decision to get sober one day and there was nothing that I really did in order to bring this on myself.

If you are struggling with alcoholism then keep your mind open to the possibility of change. It is generally fear that holds us back from making the decision to get sober so pay special attention to how this fear is working in your life. Before you can find your way to sobriety you are going to have to figure out how to get past this fear.

It is useful to think of your recovery in 2 separate stages: early recovery and long term sobriety. Early recovery is very different because you are just starting to get clean and sober and you have so much to learn. It is almost like being shocked into sobriety because the change in your life is so radical when you first stop drinking and drugging. Good strategies for this stage of sobriety include the use of overwhelming force in order to overcome addiction. An example of this would be of an alcoholic who goes to rehab and goes directly from there into long term treatment where they live for a year or two. This sounds drastic but that is what it takes for many people to make it through early recovery. Another example of using overwhelming force is when someone attends several 12 step meetings every day for the first 90 days of their recovery. This is also a helpful strategy for those who struggle to put together any meaningful clean time.

The main point is that you need to apply a lot of leverage in order to make it through the early stage of sobriety. After you make it through your first few months then you will naturally start to transition into long term recovery.

Long term sobriety is very different from early recovery. In early recovery, the focus is on networking with others and doing whatever you can to scrape by with another day sober. In long term sobriety, the focus is on creating a new life for yourself and pushing yourself to grow continuously so that you do not fall victim to complacency.

Let's take a closer look at those ideas. You need to create a new life for yourself through the use of goal setting and living with real purpose. This means that you find things in recovery that get you excited about life and start pursuing those things in a meaningful way. For example, many people in recovery will become actively involved with helping other addicts and alcoholics to recover. Doing so is one of the best things you can do for your own recovery and it will strengthen it immeasurably.

The second thing you need to do is to push yourself to grow. In long term sobriety, we don't have much problem with staying sober on a day to day basis. The real problem is in letting ourselves become complacent and being lazy. If this is the case then we run the risk of eventually relapsing.

The way to overcome this threat is to constantly be pushing yourself to grow as a person. This is the whole key to long term sobriety. If you stay active in pursuing new challenges for yourself then you will always be strengthening your recovery program.