It sounds great–the idea that you can recover from addiction as an introvert, without having to immerse yourself in meetings or groups.
But is it really possible to just dive into this amazing life of recovery without any help whatsoever?
Let’s take a closer look.
What is a “real” alcoholic or drug addict?
Without overthinking it, I would start out by saying a real addict is someone who cannot stop on their own, even when they have decided that they would like to stop.
That person has said: “I’m sick of this, my drug of choice is killing me, it’s ruining my life, and I would like to be clean and sober now”….and then they try to get clean, and they fail.
And possibly they have an established pattern of this as well. They have tried over and over again to get clean and sober, and failed repeatedly.
Contrast this with someone who has an incident with drinking or drug use, maybe suffers some short term consequences, and then quickly corrects their behavior and eliminates the problem going forward.
This is where it gets tricky–the addict must be honest with themselves about what category they fall into: Are they a “true alcoholic,” or are they just someone with a temporary problem who can clean up quickly and move on from the consequences they just experienced?
The pattern going forward is what determines the answer. If the addict or alcoholic continues to struggle, and the misery persists, then that person is in denial of the fact that they are a “real” addict or alcoholic.
And if that person then makes an attempt to quit, and they fail, then….
…that person needs to seek help.
Minimizing social exposure
Some introverts have social anxiety, and some introverts just want to avoid as much social interaction in their recovery solution as possible.
Either way, we have an interest in minimizing the amount of social exposure we have when we seek help in overcoming our addiction.
Here is how the process unfolds for real addicts and alcoholics:
1) Struggle through your addiction. Experience enough misery that you finally decide to try to get rid of your drug of choice. Try and fail at this. Perhaps over and over again.
2) Finally break through your denial – admit that you are a “real” alcoholic or drug addict, and that you cannot stop on your own. You need serious help. You cannot do it alone. If you could, you would have done so by now. You have already tried and failed.
3) Become willing to ask for help and reach out. My suggestion for this is to call a local treatment center and ask them what you need to do in order to go to inpatient treatment.
4) The treatment center should start guiding you through this process. If they don’t, simply call another treatment center. Keep doing this until one of them helps you. Honestly this should not be a problem. This is their entire purpose.
5) You may need a medical detox and you may not, depending on your drug of choice and the time of your last use.
6) You take a leap of faith and go to inpatient treatment, with or without medical detox included. You stay roughly 14 – 28 days.
7) You endure the social interaction. You will have peers with you in treatment, daily groups, and likely 12 step meetings every day.
8) After this 2 to 4 weeks you start working the Introverted Recovery program, and then you can leave 95% of social interaction behind forever if you want.
If you stay clean and sober for the rest of your life, then going to rehab for 2 weeks may represent only .001% of your recovery journey. If there is some social interaction involved, then that is a sacrifice that is well worth it.
Desperation can overcome your anxiety
I’m honestly not sure if I had what is considered to be social anxiety, or if I was just really averse to social interaction–but I really, really did not want to go to inpatient treatment.
What happened though is, at some point, my misery became overwhelming. I felt like I was approaching a breaking point, a point of no return. I really did not want to keep going in my addiction. I was just beyond miserable, and then it got even worse, and then it got ten times worse, and it was just this downward spiral from which there was no escape.
I was afraid of rehab, I was really nervous and anxious of social situations in treatment, and being “forced” into groups and meetings, but at some point–the desperation to escape my misery overcame this anxiety.
This is what they call “the turning point.” This is the point of surrender. This is when I threw my hands up, essentially, and said to the world “I don’t care any more, I don’t care about me, or you, or anything at all. I don’t care about my anxiety, about being nervous, about looking silly to others, about being judged, I don’t care about any of it.”
And that was the moment that I became willing to ask for help. To go to rehab. To face my peers, to face some groups, to face the meetings.
I was just so miserable in my addiction that I just didn’t care any more.
And that was the day my life changed forever.
Treatment left my introversion intact
Early in my recovery, a therapist tried to tell me that I was going to have to open up, emotionally, in front of groups of people, if I was going to be successful in long term sobriety.
It turns out she was wrong.
I now have 24 years of continuous sobriety while embracing the principles of the Introverted Recovery program and minimizing social pressure.
I don’t go to meetings. I don’t share in groups. And I haven’t done so for 99% of my recovery journey. In the beginning I went to inpatient treatment, and I endured a few meetings, and some groups, but I quickly found my own path. And I was terrified that I would fail, but I used that fear to propel me into massive action.
And I started to experiment and figure out what really kept people clean and sober. I started to really pay attention to the “winners” in recovery, to see what they were actually doing–not what they were saying.
And then I started looking at various programs of recovery–not just AA and NA, or religious based programs, but also meditation based programs, exercise based programs, and a variety of other disciplines that had proved to be successful for others.
I was scrambling for solutions, because I knew that I did not want a social solution–I did not want group therapy, and I did not want to sit in AA meetings for the rest of my life.
And it worked. I was able to find success. 24 years later, I’m still going strong.
But yes–I had to have help in the beginning. I could not go from zero to sixty without a little jump start at the beginning. And for me, that jump start was inpatient rehab.
It was a fear that I had to face in order to access the rewards of a lifetime of recovery. It has been well worth it.
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