When I was still struggling with addiction and alcoholism, I went to see a therapist. I can remember telling the therapist that I was completely against going to meetings, that I did not feel comfortable sharing at meetings, and I just could not see myself ever working that kind of recovery program.
The therapist told me that I really only had 2 options: Go to meetings, or go to a religious based program. And I suppose at the time, from a professional standpoint, those were the tools that he had available to him. His client needs help with addiction, he has to send them somewhere. AA meetings are everywhere. That’s what is available.
In that sense, mainstream recovery and 12 step programs are actually quite powerful, in that they are entrenched as the default solution, and they have meetings all over the world, and if you need quick help you can generally find a meeting in a pinch, even if you are in a city that is completely foreign to you. That is a huge advantage.
But what if you didn’t need meetings at all? What if real addicts and alcoholics could actually recover….on their own?
Today I know that is possible. I’m an introvert who stepped away from meetings and have built a successful life in recovery.
It’s not easy to walk away from meetings
The process of leaving 12 step meetings is terrifying. The reason for this is because of the “groupthink” there, where everyone is saying things such as:
1) “Meeting makers make it. And those who make it, make meetings.”
2) “Everyone who stops coming to these meetings eventually comes back and tells us a tale of relapse.”
3) “Some people who leave the meetings never make it back.”
4) “I drank/used drugs every day, so I need a meeting every day.”
These ideas and sayings get repeated and reinforced at 12 step meetings constantly. It is a fear-based message that essentially says: If you stop attending meetings you will relapse and potentially end up in jail or dead.
And they’re not wrong, if all you do is step away from meetings and do nothing else for your recovery.
But that is where Introverted Recovery comes into play.
You can walk away from meetings, make a deliberate effort at working your own program, and live a life of freedom in recovery–without the grind of daily meetings.
Daily meetings give you some advantages that we need to make up for
Now you don’t just get to prop your feet up and be lazy.
This is going to take some work.
When you go to meetings every day, you are getting a cheat code for your recovery–essentially you get to reinforce the idea that “I am an addict, and I have to be aware of my triggers because I’m an addict.” And sitting in that meeting every single day reinforces this, over and over, whether you actively think about it or not.
This is identification. It’s a subtle thing that most people overlook. Your brain is doing this on the back end. It is saying “oh yeah, I’m an addict, so ignore that liquor ad over there, we aren’t drinking any more anyway, etc.” And it kind of puts you on autopilot, because you are going to meetings every day.
If you never go to meetings at all, your brain will forget (not you, but your brain), and this immediate response will not be there. It will take much longer for that thought to catch up, and for your brain to say “oh yeah, liquor, we don’t do that any more.” Because you aren’t reinforcing it every day, and identifying over and over every day, your brain is not quite so quick to shut down those little triggers.
And that matters. Because when your brain gets to entertain one of those fantasies for even 10 seconds, it ends up making you miserable in the end, because you realize you are “depriving yourself.”
So meeting makers have an automatic shortcut that we are not going to have.
Another shortcut they have is that they have this social safety net, an immediate shoulder to cry on, and instant access to quick advice if needed. They are surrounded by people in recovery every day.
So we have a lot to make up for if we want to level the playing field.
How do we do that?
How do we stay sober if we aren’t going to meetings?
This is more than “feel good personal growth” recovery
Because we want to avoid the traditional approach to recovery that slants heavily towards socialization, we are going to have to push much harder in other areas.
Specifically, these areas will include our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health.
So essentially we take a holistic approach to recovery, and we look at what we can do to improve our life in every area possible–other than our social life–and then we start pushing to make those things happen.
Specifically, there are 3 ways that this program gets implemented on a practical level.
1) Follow a daily task list.
It’s not just personal growth in a general sense. We are going to specific, and we are going to take deliberate actions.
Following a daily task list
This was critical for me when I first stepped away from meetings. I was so afraid that I was going to relapse, and I knew that if there was any way I was going to be successful at staying clean and sober, that it would be based on taking action.
And I knew that this would have to happen every day.
I drank and took drugs every day. People went to AA every day.
So I was going to have to do–whatever it was I was going to do to stay clean–every day.
So I decided that I would write down a simple to-do list of 5 things on a 3X5 index card every night, and I would put it in my pocket the next morning, and throughout the next day I would make sure that I did each of the tasks.
And my theory was that if I was putting the right things on that to-do list, that I could stay clean and sober.
And it worked. I had a system, and I had my daily checklist, and I had a sort of faith that the things I determined to be on this list were going to keep me clean and sober.
So the million dollar question is: What did I put on that list?
That is a topic that fills up a good chunk of the program, and your personal list will change and evolve over time.
However, that doesn’t mean that your daily checklist is complicated, or impossible for you to figure out, or some big secret, or anything of the sort.
It’s pretty basic stuff.
I was using the concept of “holistic health” as my guiding principle. So I was simply looking to do something every single day that would benefit me mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
Something deliberate. Something above and beyond. For instance, “I’m going to meditate after work tomorrow for 20 minutes before I start cooking dinner.” And also “I’m going to take a walk around the lake during my lunch break rather than sit in the break room on my phone.”
So these are little goals that you are setting for yourself, little tasks for the day, that go a bit out of the norm. “I’m going to write in a journal for 10 minutes.”
So these sound like trivial little tasks that don’t do much to move the needle when it comes to overcoming a big bad addiction, but there is more to it than that. For one thing, you are doing these things every single day, consistently, like your life depends on it (because it does!). Second, you are going to keep trying new daily tasks and finding things that work better and better for you, so you will enter a loop of continuous improvement. And third, you will also start using these daily tasks to completely eliminate pain points in your life.
The daily task list is almost like the “experimenting phase.”
Forming positive habits
Maybe you realize that writing in a journal is unlocking a lot of benefits for you (it should!). So you decide to keep doing this with a very deliberate schedule for yourself and lock it in as a permanent habit.
Now your list has only 4 things on it instead of 5, because you have locked in “journal writing” as part of your daily life. You need a new task for your list.
So you brainstorm, or you think about your discussions with your therapist (maybe you have a therapist by now?), and you come up with an idea for another task to add to the list. Maybe you add in “post in an online recovery forum once a day.”
And at the same time, maybe you had an item on your list that isn’t serving you. Maybe it’s just not clicking. It’s not doing much. So you drop it. No more “seated meditation after work.” Instead, you decide to try “walk out in the woods behind my house.” You want to see if you get similar benefits. Maybe it’s a better fit for you.
Now you are in an incremental growth loop. You are locking in the good stuff and turning them into habits. You are discarding the less useful actions and testing out alternatives. This is actual personal growth, rather than just talking about the idea of personal growth.
Eliminating pain points
If you want to avoid meetings, you cannot afford to be miserable.
It is not enough to chase happiness in your recovery. That is a trap. If you chase after “happy goals” and you reach them, you can still have “pain points” in your life that are dragging you down and holding you back from true contentment.
Don’t think of the word “happy.” Think of the word “content.” It’s not as exciting to be content, is it? But guess what…it’s a lot more stable. And once you’re content, you can easily build happiness on top of it. But people who have all sorts of frustration and pain and turmoil in their life–if they are chasing happiness–it is always going to be fleeting.
So how do you do this?
You increase self awareness, so that you can see your pain points. I recommend journal writing, consistently, over time, so that you can see the trends in your life. I also recommend one on one therapy. Both of those can allow you to better see what the root causes of your pain and frustration are.
Often we only see the surface level reasons. We need a deeper dive to see the root causes sometimes.
Once you identify a pain point, the path forward becomes simple: Put all of your energy into eliminating that pain point. Don’t worry about any others, just focus on the biggest one for now. Ask your therapist to help you with it, how you can proceed, how to address the problem, what steps to take. And then put all of your effort into it.
This is the biggest impact you can make in your life right now. When you were stuck in addiction, your biggest pain point was your addiction. You put your focus on it, and you were able to sober up and get to a point of stable recovery. That was the single biggest impact you could have on your life. That was the biggest stride you could make towards contentment and happiness.
Now, do it again. Figure out the root cause of your next biggest frustration in life. Then dedicate your efforts to solving that problem until it is resolved. This is the biggest “bang for your buck” when it comes to spending your energy.
If you want to stay sober, then you cannot be miserable. If you want to avoid frustration and pain and misery, then you have to address your pain points. If you don’t know how to do this, ask for help. Sometimes one on one therapy is a scary step that is worth taking.
This is the path to next level recovery.
Leave a Reply