When I first got clean and sober (for a third time, the first two I had relapsed), I was exposed to the world of AA and NA meetings.
As an introvert, I quickly said “this isn’t for me.”
I wanted a different path in recovery.
Yet, I was terrified of leaving the program.
I noticed that people in AA meetings would say things such as “everyone who leaves these meetings ends up drinking.”
I can remember one AA member would always say “they always come back with their tail between their legs, talking about how they relapsed, and that it isn’t any better out there, and that these meetings are the only thing that works.”
And some people would flat out say that you were destined to die if you walked away from the meetings.
So yeah, I was terrified at the prospect of leaving AA and NA meetings.
But I knew they were not for me.
I had to find another way.
Building your confidence up to make the leap
Honestly, when I left the 12 step program, I really was not all that confident. What I am hoping is that I can teach you how to gain some confidence before you make the leap into what I call “introverted recovery.”
There are a few things that you need to get straight before you can gain this confidence. To some extent, it all depends on where you are at in your recovery process. It is going to look different for someone who has been going to AA for a year versus someone who had their last drink one week ago and has not even gone to a single meeting their whole life. Those 2 people are going to approach this process differently, which is why you might do well to check out the overall program guide as a starting point.
However, the main idea of Introverted Recovery is that, because you are eliminating the element of social support, you need to be strong enough in all of the other areas of your life.
This means that you need to seriously up your game when it comes to physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth.
Meaning that you need to target goals in these areas, daily things that you can do in order to make progress in each of these areas every day, and then make a dedicated effort to hustle every single day to progress in each of these areas.
People who are working traditional recovery, such as AA and NA, are generally just sitting in meetings every day for the rest of their lives. This is enough to keep them clean and sober, because it happens every single day. It is a “lazy shortcut,” if you will, to recovery maintenance. It is effective for them, but they have to attend a group, invest the time, and generally share out loud in front of a group of people. That is the cost they pay, and the amount of personal growth that they get may be very low in return. It is a way to maintain, but not necessarily thrive.
In contrast to this approach, Introverted Recovery eliminates the social element and focuses on personal growth with a different sort of process. It still requires daily action. Just like the AA member has to show up to meetings every day, the person in Introverted Recovery has to take deliberate action every day in order to maintain their recovery. But there are some critical differences:
1) Introverted Recovery focuses on holistic health rather than the spiritual and social push that you get in AA/NA. It is a broader approach and therefore the potential for overall health improvement is greater. For example, AA ignores a person’s mental health, whereas Introverted Recovery addresses this aspect on a daily basis as part of an ongoing push for self improvement.
2) Introverted Recovery focuses on personal growth beyond what is required for sobriety itself. The 12 steps in AA/NA are worked once, and then a few steps are ongoing (10-12) as a daily maintenance in order to help keep themselves sober while also helping others in recovery. Noble goals, but these don’t really push the individual to expand and grow beyond a certain point once they achieve this baseline. Introverted Recovery has you push for new goals, on an ongoing basis, in the areas of physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental health–not to mention eliminating pain points in your life. This is all above and beyond the basic goal of maintaining sobriety.
3) Introverted Recovery has a system of daily action and focuses on massive action. This is really where the confidence boost kicks in–you see all of these people who are sitting in AA and NA meetings every day, and they are very passive, and while they may maintain their recovery, they aren’t necessarily doing much outside of that meeting. Everyone in the meeting talks a good game, but when it comes time to put in the effort, most people in AA and NA are really just staying clean and sober through their daily dose of sharing at meetings. That’s it. They have their shortcut to sobriety, it works for them, and they don’t need to push any harder.
In the program of Introverted Recovery, there is no safety net of daily meetings where you prop your feet up, share about your day, come back tomorrow, do the same thing over again, and magically stay clean and sober for another 24 hours. We don’t have that. So instead, we have to hustle.
Hustle is how you build confidence
This is only logical when you think about it: regardless of what recovery program you are in, you cannot just step away from it for a week or a month and expect to stay clean and sober. Your addiction is always going to be right there, ready to sneak back into your life, and you have to protect against this threat every single day.
This is where the idea of daily hustle comes into play. You can never let up in your quest for recovery, no matter what program you adhere to.
Knowing this should increase your confidence. You have a plan of attack in introverted recovery: Figure out your checklist for tomorrow–what are you going to do for your physical health? Your emotional health? Your mental health? And so on. Then you create a checklist. Then you work through that list as you go about your day. And you make it a priority. This is the commitment and the hustle that will bring you confidence. As you start working this program, you will establish habits, set more goals, create new checklists, and these positive actions will keep becoming automatic habits. You will keep finding ways to eliminate stumbling blocks and pain points in your life. And you will keep hustling and working at this system every single day.
And your confidence will grow as you see it working and you see your life improving as a result. You will believe in the process, and you will be excited about the positive changes you are making, and you will be delighted when you realize that you can set a goal–almost any goal–and then dedicate your life to achieving it.
You can grind out daily AA meetings, or you can grind out the hustle of personal growth in this program. You just have to decide what path suits you better, and what results you want.
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