Addiction treatment, to be truly successful and lead to a lasting recovery, must be about more than just weaning a person off of drugs or alcohol. It must also include a psychological component, to help the patient not only resist addiction going forward, but also to move past their past mistakes lest they overwhelm them. Addiction can make people do terrible things they regret later, and that regret can haunt a person if they don’t get the help they need to move and grow past that period.
To truly find a lasting recovery, the recovering addict needs to find forgiveness and healing by embracing grace on the journey to recovery.
Substance abuse is a difficult time for anyone, and many addicts, while in the throes of addiction, will find themselves doing things they never would have considered before their substance abuse took over their life. Their priorities shift until their loyalty is almost entirely given, not to friends or family or other loved ones, but to their substance of choice. They will lie, cheat, steal and worse to continue feeding their addiction, no matter the consequences.
After treatment, when they can look back on their behavior with clarity, they will often be horrified by the things they may have done, consumed with grief and regret over past misdeeds. And while acknowledging past wrongs is important in the recovery process, dwelling on them obsessively is absolutely not.
Indeed, an unhealthy brooding on such actions can be actively harmful to the recovery process, pushing the recovering addict to neglect past connections due to former sins, dwell on the past rather than look to the future and, in general, obsess over former wrongs rather than focus on future rights.
It’s not a healthy mindset for anyone, particularly someone trying to resist cravings and avoid relapse.
To move past this, the recovering addict must accept forgiveness and healing. This can mean asking for forgiveness from those you wronged in the past. But it must also mean the addict forgiving themselves. That is the only way to ensure the rancor and sorrow of the past does not swallow them whole and leave them open to relapse and a return to substance abuse.
For a person of faith, there’s also the option of divine forgiveness. Seeking the grace of God can help the recovering addict find the peace of mind they need to move past the sins of the past. Through prayer and supplication, the recovering addict can find rapport with the Almighty and receive a blessing of His grace to cover all their sins.
At Good Landing Recovery, forgiveness and healing are a vital part of the treatment curricula, and divine grace is a major part of that for those who believe. Good Landing is a faith-based, Christian treatment center and emphasizes the importance of grace in all it does for the good of each patient.
It is important that the recovering addict, while remembering the past and its mistakes, must also move past them emotionally and spiritually. Forgiveness can help with that, to help the patient find healing, and grace can encompass all of that for the recovering addict.