AA has a saying that “resentment is the #1 offender” in terms of causing relapse, but the truth is, those words were written when AA was quite young. After people in AA had long term sobriety, we learned that the real #1 danger in recovery is complacency–getting too comfortable in your recovery, and letting your addiction gain a sneaky foothold into your life again when you least suspect.
Thus, complacency is the real killer in long term recovery. After you have established yourself in recovery, and you feel like you have “found your groove” in sobriety, and you have a few years of clean time stacked up–that is when you really need to start worrying about complacency.
It will become the #1 threat for every recovering addict and alcoholic in the long run. Therefore, it makes sense to understand it and address it right now, going forward, so that you are already prepared for it.
Complacency in traditional recovery
What normally happens in AA, NA, (or religious based programs), is that the person in recovery will go through a burst of personal growth in the early months or years of recovery by working the steps or engaging with a program. But then after that initial push for progress, they will often just resort to passively attending AA meetings, which is just barely enough to maintain their baseline at that point–rather than to grow past it.
Thus we can segment traditional 12 step recovery into 2 groups:
1) Actively works a 12 step program and continues to push themselves towards personal growth, avoiding complacency, and giving themselves extra insurance against the threat of relapse.
2) Worked the 12 steps in the beginning, and continues to be active in terms of daily meeting attendance, but has grown complacent in terms of personal growth.
Which brings us to another key point: in most cases you are not going to know that you have become complacent.
So it’s not the sort of thing where you say “oh my goodness, it looks like I have slacked off a bit in my recovery efforts, perhaps I should refocus.” No, the whole reason that complacency is a problem is that we fool ourselves into believing that “we’ve got this.” We are confident. We’ve been clean and sober for a while now, and we don’t see ourselves having any issues.
In other words, we fool ourselves into coasting through our recovery. We’ve banked some clean time, things are going great, so we must be doing something right, right? So why change things?
Complacency is sneaky, and we need to be ready for it. So what can we do about it?
How do we prepare for this threat to our recovery?
Intentional living
It really comes down to a lifestyle of personal growth versus just living on autopilot.
As mentioned above, even if you are active in AA or NA, you can still be living on autopilot, and still be in danger of becoming complacent. Sitting in meetings every day is not necessarily personal growth.
So in order to defeat complacency, we need to get into action.
And specifically, because this is a long term problem that will be a threat for the remainder of our lives, we need to create a sustainable approach to living, such that we are always on guard against it.
So how do we live with intention in long term recovery?
It comes down to:
1) Rigorous self awareness.
2) Embracing personal growth and setting goals.
3) Breaking down those goals into daily actions.
* I have to admit, that this entire process is a bit of a refresher on the Introverted Recovery program itself, because the program is something that you live in order to stay clean, not something that you do in order to become clean. In essence, relapse prevention includes a solution for complacency, and Introverted Recovery is a program of relapse prevention. It is a living solution for recovery.
#1: Rigorous self awareness
If you’ve been digging around the Introverted Recovery program, you’ll know that this is not a new concept.
People who go to AA and NA meetings have a shortcut in this department–their peers can easily evaluate and give them feedback based on what they are sharing in meetings.
We don’t have that luxury, so we need to create our own solutions.
Those solutions are 1 on 1 therapy, and regularly writing in a journal.
Each of those can provide you with the feedback that you need in order to see where you might be sliding into complacent behavior.
They can also give you insight into growth opportunities. If you are pursuing personal growth then you are, by definition, not complacent. We’ve also talked about the idea that you may have various “pain points” in your life that you have carried with you for so long that you have come to see them as being a part of who you are. A therapist or counselor could recognize that you would benefit from working on them and eliminating them, which is something you may have not been aware of.
But I say “rigorous” self awareness for good reason–this is not something that came naturally to me, and I’m not so sure that it comes naturally to other introverts either.
We need to work at this. We need to prioritize it.
If you are going to use the Introverted Recovery program, write in a journal, and get a counselor or therapist.
#2: Embracing personal growth and setting goals
From self awareness comes the setting of goals: you see opportunities for positive changes you could make, and you see opportunities for pain points to eliminate.
You embrace holistic health and consider all areas of your life, and of your health: Physical, mental, spiritual, emotional.
You strive to improve in each of those areas, such that you become stronger and more resilient overall.
There are always going to be more goals that you can set–they don’t always have to be gigantic, live altering goals. But you should always be striving for something.
“Devote the rest of your life to making progress” – Epictetus (greek philosopher)
#3: Breaking down those goals into daily actions
We have discussed the technique of using a daily checklist.
I have purchased large packs of 3X5 index cards, and used one every day to make a checklist. Not just a to do list, but a checklist of the things I want to accomplish in order to work towards my specific goals and towards my recovery. And then I eventually burned through that entire stack of 3X5 cards, and went to the store and bought another stack of 500. And I keep burning through stacks of them. One card per day.
The checklists work. You need a system that propels you forward. Maybe for you it’s not a note card.
You need self awareness in order to know what goals will be high-impact and most helpful for you.
Then you need to set the goals and break them down into daily actions.
And then you need a system to push yourself towards those goals every single day, day after day, for the rest of your life, so that you don’t slip into complacency.
I buy packs of 3X5 index cards. I jot down my tasks on them for the day. And then I crank through those tasks.
If I find that I have nothing to write on my card for the day, it means I need a new goal. This prompts me into forward motion: What can I start working on next?
Stay aware, set goals, daily action, forward motion, personal growth.
Defeat complacency.
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