“It’s the journey, not the destination” is a cliché, but like a lot of clichés, there’s a kernel of truth in there.

Recovery is a journey. If you’re recovering from a drug or alcohol problem, you’re facing one of the longest journeys in your life. In fact, it’s a journey that never ends.

But just because the journey is long, doesn’t mean it has to be horribly difficult. It’s just that drug and alcohol are chronic conditions. If someone abused drugs or alcohol, it probably means that they abused drugs or alcohol for sometime. Substance use disorder usually doesn’t seem to happen overnight.

As a consequence, treating substance use disorder also takes time. People also experience relapses and setbacks during their recuperations. Unfortunately, some people think that these setbacks make them failures. They refuse to seek further treatment because they think their chances at recovery are finished.

The opposite is true. Failures do happen, but former addicts should keep on trying. That’s where the journey metaphor comes into play. We shouldn’t stop our journeys if we stumble. If we’re traveling somewhere and our car gets a flat tire, it can be a pain, it can be expensive, but it shouldn’t spell the end of journey.

To continue this journey forward, former addicts can look backward. This means that if they’re experiencing a setback, they can compare their situation to the past. They’re likely to find that even if they’re going through tough times, these tough times are still better than the past. They’ll remind themselves that they’ve become sober in the past. This means that they will also be able to find sobriety in the future.

Although relapses are discouraging, then, they don’t have to mean the end of a journey. Former addicts might decide to go through this journey one step at a time and even through 12 step programs. They need to remember that one step forward is progress.