You Are Sober- Now What

You got yourself clean and sober and today the fog is beginning to lift and realness smacks you in the face:

This is your life. Sober.

Now, what are you going to do to sustain it?

This is the entire point of a recovery program, be it a spiritual based program, the 12 step plan, a series of counseling and therapy sessions, or whatsoever. They all seek to do the same thing:

Keep you from backsliding.

So which one is the most beneficial one? What is the most beneficial technique of preventing relapse?

Now plainly there are recovering addicts and alcoholics who succeed utilizing different forms of relapse prevention. A few individuals follow a spiritual based plan and they do exceedingly well with it and it transforms their life for the better and they never utilize drugs or alcohol again.
Others will totally reject a religious based plan and they will not become open to the theme even for a short moment. For them, perhaps a different sort of relapse prevention works best, even the spiritual based 12 step plan maybe.

And still others are out there recovering who don't utilize faith or 12 step programs to prevent relapse. They discover additional ways to metamorphose their lives.

So now you understand: there's more than one way to live clean and sober in recovery. There's more than one way to forestall backsliding. Blanket statements like “Each alcoholic has one hope in this world and that's the plan of AA” are simply dead wrong.

The most beneficial relapse prevention model that is unparalleled to you is likely a mixture of many approaches, and will depend upon your willingness to search out what works for you, and what doesn't work for you.
Consider that for a minute:
It's your duty to test out what works better for you in recovery.

This guides us to 2 major hints:

* Don’t simply blindly live with the 1st solution stuffed down your throat, and
* Don’t simply sit there. Become active, and begin exploring your own development in recovery.
Finding what works for you

What do you utilize to assess success in recovery?
By far the most crucial measure is upheld abstinence. If you relapse, what you were doing wasn't working. Try something else. Relapse is the elemental indicator that you have to modify your plan of attack to recovery.

But let’s suppose that you manage to lay down a couple of weeks or a couple of months of clean time, but you nevertheless don’t feel really positive in your recovery. What is a different measure of success that you are able to utilize to judge how well you're doing?

Favorable daily action.

If somebody says “what did you accomplish for your recovery today?” and all you are able to say is “well, I didn’t drink or utilize drugs, but that's enough!” then I think you're really harming yourself in the long haul.

If abstention was all that was called for, then we would not require plans, or self help groups, or rehabs, or therapists, or counselors, or whatsoever. If all it called for was abstention, then there would be no junkies or boozers.

But recovery calls for more than mere abstention. If all you may claim as favorable action for every day is your sobriety, then you're on thin ice. You have to accomplish more.

More what?

More favorable action. More favorable changes in your life that center on personal growth.

I can't tell you what your precise relapse prevention program is, as everybody will be unique in that respect. But if you're not taking favorable action each day, then you have to discover a way to turn things around.
For instance, you may:

* Work out.
* Assist others in recovery.
* Go to meetings and share frankly.
* Go to religious groups and become involved with the community.
* Better your education and learn more.
* Volunteer.
* Instruct.

These are generally just general actions you may take to provide you an idea.

But truly what you wish to do is to figure out how you are able to grow personally, how you may better your own life, and how you may utilize your extra talents to assist and empower other people in the world. What are you great at doing? How may you best assist others? Discover a rewarding way to accomplish that.

A great relapse prevention program is based totally on YOU taking action. What actions you adopt are subject to experiment. You might have to research for a while. However the key is that you don't sit stagnate, and expect your recovery to come to you.

No, you have to go produce it for yourself.

If you abide by somebody else’s relapse prevention program, then you can't truly complain if you're not acquiring the outcomes that you wish. Rather, take charge of your own recovery, and begin working out which path will lead to personal growth.

Accept responsibility for your own success in recovery.