Recovery from addiction is an ongoing process that, theoretically, never ends, but it is usually suggested that it be approached incrementally, one-day-at-a- time. Indeed, smaller time increments are sometimes required – one-hour-at-a-time, etc.
While this approach may be successful in reducing the despair caused by viewing the process as a lifelong and arduous undertaking, there needs to be elements of long-term, strategic and anticipatory thinking in recovery.
This does not conflict with the one-day-at-a-time model, but as with any overall plan of action, adds the element of directed goal-seeking and anticipation of personal gain to the equation.
Active behavior in addiction is heavily influenced by short-term thinking. Short-term, indeed often immediate, goals are set and though they might be pursued vigorously, longer term consequences are frequently ignored. At the same time, dominant short term-thinking “crowds out” consideration of longer term rewards that would accrue from productive behaviors.
Experience has shown that an addict will take extreme steps to acquire and insure the availability of drugs. This may and often does include manipulation, deceit, robbery and other criminal acts, among others. Addicts are often willing to reduce lifestyle levels, sacrifice valuable and cherished relationships, and endure physical hardships in order to secure the drug of choice. Though not a choice, severe criminal punishments are often a consequence of such a mode of thinking.
We often hear about addicts who place themselves in danger trying to purchase drugs or who drive while intoxicated, knowing that the penalties for this behavior are severe and costly. Again, the perceived gain from doing this is a short-term and fleeting one.
In early recovery the addict is still preoccupied with short-term goal setting. That is, he is trying to just stay sober for today. He uses tools such as avoiding those people, places, or things that are associated with past drug use. He comes to accept his inability to control drug use and his powerlessness over that use, as stated so clearly in the first of the Alcoholics Anonymous’ twelve steps. Triggers are identified and either avoided or confronted, with the emphasis placed on the former.
What we see happening in this early, and very necessary, phase of recovery, is a careful removal of elements that had been associated with the addict’s drug use, including the removal of the drug use itself. In the process, the addict often must remove from his life friends, living accommodations, leisure activities, jobs, and even family.
Given the fact that the addict in early recovery is literally in a life or death situation, extreme measures are indicated and such dramatic life changes are often justified and necessary.
As necessary as these changes are, and role they play in increasing the addict’s chance of successful recovery notwithstanding, they all represent the removal of something from the addict’s life and often are perceived by the addict as a loss. These losses can represent a severe emotional trauma that can actually contribute to relapse. Consider the following lifestyle adjustments that an addict may face:
Loss of the comfort and avoidance provided by drug use
Loss of friendships, often the only friendships an addict has
Loss of familial relationships
Loss of jobs not conducive to recovery
Loss of behavioral supports such as rituals associated with drug use
Loss of living arrangements posing a threat to recovery
We can see that early recovery can be dominated by losses to an addict. These losses represent much of what constituted the addict’s life prior to recovery. This creates a vacuum in the emotional and behavioral environment of the recovering addict’s life. The adage that “nature abhors a vacuum” is never truer than here.
To compound the problem, early recovery provides one very significant and dangerous thing: free time. All of the time an addict had spent planning, manipulating, acquiring, and using drugs is now open. While many in AA suggest that an addict fill much of this time with meetings, commitments, and sober support development, and that may be a good approach initially, it still addresses only short-term issues. It focuses on the mechanics of staying sober now and while providing a structural environment supportive of recovery.
While this tactical approach to recovery serves an essential purpose I think it is important that a strategic approach be developed concomitantly. It is this approach that will provide the addicts with the long-term vision of life that it is an essential part of the human spirit.
It serves no purpose to study how we get someplace if we don’t know where we’re going. It is this discovery of where we want to be and what we want to be that is the focus here. These considerations are taken, of course, in light of the day-to-day tactical considerations of our recovery program. This offers us an opportunity to reevaluate, indeed, to reinvent our lives in a new way, in a way that allows for if not requires a sober and sane lifestyle.
Tags: criminal acts, criminal punishments, drug addiction, drug of choice, physical hardships, short term goal, term consequences, term rewards, time increments, time model