This month I’m posting a summary of the last of my 5 installments from my most recent book:  The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery.  This month is on Commitment to Recovery.  If you waffle about whether recovery is a long-term process, please be sure to read this before you decide for a quick fix.

Commitment to Recovery is a Daily Choice

One of the main struggles of people who have addiction issues is that they tend to experience a lot of ambivalence, or a tendency to waffle, about whether or not they will use.  They also tend to waffle about whether they need help or not, as well as their relationships, and just about everything else you can think of.  This also applies to whether to participate in the recovery process.  You may think they have to commit to never drinking again, never smoking weed again, never having sex again, etc., depending on what it is you have an addiction to.  This is a set up for failure.  The key is that recovery is a daily choice.  I don’t know of anyone who achieved long-term sobriety or abstinence from an addiction or addictive behavior by focusing on never using again.  What they do instead is to make a daily commitment to sobriety or abstinence.  That commitment can be made more than once in the same day as well!  For example, if you commit to recovery at the start of the day but then have a slip or relapse, you can start your day over and try again. 

Committing to Recovery is Committing to Yourself

Recovery isn’t something you do to please a spouse, or to please a 12-step sponsor, or to please your therapist.  It is primarily for yourself.  You can do it for others in part, but the main person you do it for is you!  If recovery didn’t benefit you somehow, you never would do it in the first place.  If my spouse is giving me pressure to abstain or be sober, then I’m making a choice for the relationship and myself.  So in that sense it is a selfish choice, but one that opens up your life so you can stop behaving so selfishly as you have in the past.  

The focus here is also on being gentle with yourself, and that is especially true when you have a relapse or a slip of some sort.  The tendency may be to get into self hate and berate yourself for having had a relapse or a slip, but that only makes the problem worse over the long-term.  It is at these times when you need to be kind and gentle to yourself.  If you have ever been to support group meetings and someone shares about having had a recent relapse, almost always the others in the group are very supportive of that person.  That is the kind of attitude we need to have with ourselves in such instances.  

Commitment to Recovery and Resilience

One of the key things with coming back from slips and relapses is they can help us see things very clearly right after they happen.  If we are fortunate and those slips and relapses don’t kill us, they teach us valuable lessons.  These are lessons we may need to relearn at times.  They also touch on the concept of resilience, which we all have to some extent.  As I say in the book: 

This ability to bounce back is commonly referred to as resilience and is a cornerstone of clinical work in the behavioral sciences.  Resilience is typically considered to be greater with children and young people, but older adults have resilience, too.  Little children fall down while learning to walk, but they do get up.  In the process, they learn to master the task of walking and eventually become masters of their bodies as a whole.  If the parent chastises the child each time he or she falls, the child can develop a lot of insecurity later on.  If the parent is gentle, understanding, and encouraging, the child learns to walk more easily and has a greater sense of self-confidence later on in their lives.

Again, the importance of being gentle with oneself is critical here.  That is part of resilience as well.  

Commitment to Recovery and Self-Acceptance

The final part of commitment to recovery has to do with self-acceptance, and it is woven into much of what I’ve already talked about.  Over time in recovery we learn to accept ourselves for who we are:  good people with a disease.  That principle of self-acceptance eventually allows us to overcome ourselves because we aren’t as attached to our egos that are always selfishly focusing on what we get out of every situation.  At some point we can be more able to focus on others and what we can do for them instead of what’s in it for us.  My last quote is from later in the section on page 26:  

I know for a fact that miracles happen, but I think they do depend on our being willing to act on our own behalf and best interests.  Timing can be everything in recovery, but if we’re not practicing a plan of sobriety and abstinence, miracles may go unnoticed.

I encourage you to do your best and hang in there to discover your own miracles.  If you need help and are looking for a therapist for addiction recovery, you are welcome to contact me at the number above or to fill out the form below.  My specialty is problematic sexual behavior, but I help people with other addiction issues as well.  

Visit our page on sex addiction therapy to find out how Scott can help you with coping skills.   

About the author:  Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW is a private practice therapist in Frederick, Maryland.  He has an extensive background in working with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder at a clinic for older adults with these disorders in Austin.  He now works with adults and adolescents 14 and up in private practice. His most recent book is titled The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery and is available for purchase on Amazon and in paperback on this website.