Addiction is a disease and, almost as bad, it is a deception – a deception the addict tells themselves, about themselves, while caught in the throes of substance abuse. When the recovering addict is leaving addiction behind, however, they must also abandon the deception they have indulged in their time in addiction and discover who they are without substance abuse in their life. Yet this can be a hard path for the recovering addict.
The journey to self-discovery in sobriety is a long but vital struggle in the road to recovery.
We all like to think we know who we are, but it can be all too easy to find ways to lie to ourselves about different aspects of ourselves and substance abuse makes this all the easier. Addicts tell themselves they remain in control even as they spiral out of control. They tell themselves they can stop anytime even as they will do anything to feed their addiction rather than stop. They tell themselves they remain the same person they were before their addiction took hold even as they do things they never would have considered before substance abuse destroyed inhibitions and made them abandon any priorities they may have once held above their addiction.
This can leave the recovering addict feeling adrift as they leave treatment. They can feel they lost who they once were before addiction and have not yet determined who they will be in recovery. But making that determination is not a simple task.
Part of the recovery process, therefore, must be making a journey to self-discovery. If the addict cannot decide who they are in their new state of sobriety, they can be left aimless and adrift, potentially at risk of relapse, due to their lack of self-assured identity.
But such an endeavor is not as simple as just deciding who you want to be. That might be where you start, but becoming the person you should be is a more involved process. You must determine how to start that journey and where you want it to take you. And you must do it while striving to maintain sobriety in the midst of your recovery journey.
So how to get started? It starts in treatment, as you work to shed the person you were under the shadow of addiction, but you want to build even as you tear down the old. You must fight to discover who you once were, and hope to be again, but you must add to that the struggle of your substance abuse battle and the beginning of your recovery to that person. You are not who you were before addiction, not just that. You are a recovering addict and you must build that atop your old identity and reinforce your commitment to recovery and sobriety within that.
At Good Landing Recovery, treatment and therapy can help you begin that process of discovery as you determine who you were, who you want to be and how to get from one to the other, without letting the damage of addiction which lies between the two interfere. With such help, you can begin the healing process and start deciding who you will be in recovery and going forward in your journey to sobriety.
Addiction can be a destructive experience, demolishing the edifice of your life and leaving ruins in its wake. But you don’t have to let that be the final word on your life. You can move forward and rebuild yourself and your identity on top of such ruins to become a stronger version of yourself.