One of the easiest ways to fail during recovery is to try to go it alone. While it’s not impossible to remain sober on your own, it’s far too easy for someone without a proper support system to fall into temptation and end up succumbing to cravings and finding themselves in relapse. A recovering addict is much more likely to remain sober with a little help from their friends, as the continual support of others provides a necessary accountability.
It's impossible to overstate the importance of accountability in recovery as it provides a means for former addicts and others to walk the path together.
Accountability may sound like an imposing word, but it’s an important aspect of recovery for many a former addict right out of treatment. Once out of the enclosed, structured world of rehab, it can be challenging for the newly sober patient to deal with all the new challenges and struggles of the workaday world and avoid relapse simultaneously. Accountability, however, gives the recovering addict a system of checks and balances to remind them of their progress and what’s at risk should they fail to remain sober.
To be accountable is to submit your progress to another person, telling them of your work and struggle in recovery and allowing them to keep up with your success and occasional stumbles in recovery.
While personal accountability is an important thing — we must monitor ourselves and try and stay sober on our own willpower whenever possible — a recovering addict can find greater results by choosing someone else to be their confidant, someone who will hold them accountable in their road to recovery.
Who that person is can vary depending on your needs. It may be a friend or other loved one, someone you talk to frequently and don’t mind sharing personal struggles with. It may be a sponsor in a support group, someone who has been where you are before and understands the challenges of sobriety when recovering from addiction. It could be an entire network of people, all of them invested in your personal growth and wanting to ensure you remain sober.
For accountability to truly work, honesty is paramount. You can’t be truly accountable if you only share your success with someone else and conceal your failures. Only an honest partnership with someone else can make the system functional. To work together with someone, you must be open with them about all aspects of your recovery journey.
At Good Landing Recovery, accountability is a vital part of the recovery process. Even after you leave treatment, the program is designed to ensure you remain accountable at all stages of your recovery, enabling you to feel more confident in your sobriety and to move past any failures into success, rather than let one misstep lead into full relapse and a return to addictive substance abuse.
By choosing an accountability partner wisely and working together for your sobriety, you have a greater chance of success in remaining sober. The importance of accountability in recovery should be emphasized to ensure you can walk the path together into a brighter tomorrow.
