Yesterday, we talked about how recovery is a journey, not a destination. Although we go through rehab with the goal of becoming sober, sobriety is an ongoing goal. It’s not a goal that you reach, a goal that ends. Instead, sobriety is an ongoing goal that we strive for every day.
One of the benefits of viewing recovery as an ongoing goal is that it makes it easier to deal with relapses. Relapses from sobriety can be devastating, but they don’t have to be the end of our recovery journeys. If we view our sobriety as ongoing journeys, we can realize that these relapses are difficult, but they’re also temporary.
If we view relapses as temporary, we’ll be less likely to end our recoveries entirely. It’s kind of like when people on specific diets end up bingeing on foods not on those diets. These people sometimes figure that they’ve strayed from their diets already, so they might as well keep eating and eating those foods and stray even further from their diets.
People who relapse sometimes do similar things. They might figure that because they’ve had a drink or some drugs, they’ve failed entirely. They figure that they might as well keep drinking or abusing drugs.
But if people view recovery as an ongoing process, they might see these binges as temporary setbacks, not as the end of their recoveries. They can examine their behaviors during these binges, look for ways to address this behaviors, and take steps to prevent such binges from occurring in the future.
Just as importantly, they can forgive themselves for their relapses. They can remember that despite all of our best intentions, we sometimes make mistakes. These mistakes occur in recovery and in all areas in our lives.
We shouldn’t keep beat ourselves up for things we can’t change in the past. All we can do is work on the present and try to position ourselves well for the future. Working on our recoveries, one small step at a time, is one way to do this.
