The Secret of Overcoming Addiction and Alcoholism

What is the secret to overcoming addiction and alcoholism?

The secret of recovery stems from a decision to stop using drugs and alcohol. In this post I will explain how to make this critical decision, and what is necessary to maintain a lasting sobriety. The technique is based on my personal experience–what actually worked for me in achieving long-term sobriety.

What is the Biggest Secret to a Successful Recovery?

You Don’t Need a Hammer to Pound in the Recovery Nail….You Need an Enormous Sledgehammer! What do I mean by this? Simply that most people underestimate their disease, and they do not grasp the importance of dedicating their life to recovery.

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This is the big breakthrough that so many newcomers fail to make. They do not commit to their recovery with overwhelming force. This is understandable, given the way our life typically works. When we have a new experience, or a new challenge to overcome, we usually try to be efficient about it. We don’t want to waste time, effort, and energy. So we typically put forth a modest effort when attempting to conquer a new challenge in our lives. For most situations, this is a reasonable approach.

Of course, this doesn’t work with recovery. With only a modest effort, relapse is inevitable. A recovering addict might learn from this mistake, and give it another try, and they still won’t commit to a 100 percent effort. Instead, they will try only a little bit harder than last time. This is a natural progression, and one that usually makes sense in our world. Why go overboard? Why waste energy? And so, addicts and alcoholics continue to relapse, as they slowly find out just how much it takes to maintain sobriety.

Go From Zero to Sixty in Your Recovery, Right Now

The answer to all this, of course, is to commit fully to overcomingaddiction. What does that mean? You must initially dedicate your entire life to it. Use the concept of overwhelming force to dominate your new goals in recovery. Don’t just push yourself to follow your recovery plan with a modest effort. Instead, crush your goals completely by going far above and beyond what you think is actually necessary. Here are three ways to do that:

1) Long Term Treatment

This sounds like an extreme measure to most people, but living in long term treatment for 20 months was one of the best decisions I ever made. There is almost no way to achieve a higher level of support than to live with other recovering addicts and alcoholics. Long term treatment saved my life. It works.

2) Develop a Huge Support System

They tell you to get phone numbers of other recovering addicts and alcoholics and to use them. They tell you to get a sponsor. They tell you to call these people and interact with them on a daily basis. Most people make only a half-hearted attempt at this type of networking. Those who make it in recovery develop a huge support system that is vital to success.

3) Hit Those Meetings

A popular suggestion is to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. To many people, this sounds like overkill. But it’s really just a modest baseline. Ask someone with several years in sobriety and they will almost always tell you that they went to MORE than 90 meetings in 90 days in the beginning.

Starting to see a pattern here?

Overcommitment. Going above and beyond the suggestions. Organizing your entire life around recovery. These are the strategies that produce lasting sobriety.

There is More

The suggestions covered above are all great, and they were a huge part of what kept me sober in the beginning. But the real secret to recovery lies in the spiritual experience–this has proven to be the key to long term sobriety for me. Next week I’ll be posting a complete guide to the spiritual experience.

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Tagged as: Addiction, addiction recovery, alcoholic, alcoholism, Drug addict, Recovery, spiritual, spiritual experience, spirituality