Recovery Overview

Below is an outline of the basics of my recovery program.  Most of it I’ve learned from books or other people in recovery, but I’ve lived it and made it mine now. Each link will take you to a list of blog posts that have something to do with that topic so you can dig into any of the topics you want to. 

When I am working with someone new to recovery as their sponsor, I tell them to get the basics (listed below under “The Basics” in place first, then start working the 12 steps, and then everything else will fall into place.

• The Basics
  • Dailies – These are things I do every day to keep me balanced.
  • Boundaries – These separate safe situations from unsafe ones.
  • Connections-Shame and isolation kept me in my addiction, connection keeps me out of addiction.
  • Sponsor / Support Person – Someone farther along in recovery than me who can share their experience and speed up my recovery.
  • Phone Calls / Text Messages – Another way to stay connected.
  • 12-Step Meetings – Connection plus learning and progress – the main key to recovery!
• The 12 Steps – (I’m using the generic AA wording of the steps below.)
  • Step 0 – Became part of a fellowship of recovery.
  • Step 1 – We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.
  • Step 2 – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  • Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
  • Step 4 – Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  • Step 5 – Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  • Step 6 – Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  • Step 7 – Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
  • Step 8 – Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  • Step 9 – Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  • Step 10 – Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
  • Step 11 – Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
  • Step 12 – Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
• Other helpful topics
  • Habits – Changing from the outside in.
  • Lust – The opposite of love.  The source of compulsion.  A form of hatred.
  • Relapses and Triggers – Tips and tricks for learning.
  • Shame and Isolation – The core of addiction.
  • Denial and Gas-lighting
  • Codependency – Addiction to other people’s reactions to me.
  • I often learn through Analogies, so here are several in case you do too.
  • Results – What have I gotten out of addiction recovery above and beyond being free from addiction?
• Myth-busting
  • Marriage doesn’t fix lust/sex addiction if you don’t switch love for lust.
  • Men will be men?  Sex drive is created by my choices to lust.