Dallas Bragg argues that recovery built on fear fails, but recovery rooted in unconditional love and self-love sustains long-term change. He offers a simple diagnostic: ask yourself whether your program, the people around you, and your own thinking come from fear or love.
There are many routes to recovery, but here's a way to gauge whether that program, the literature, and the people you're surrounding yourself are helping or hurting your recovery process. Do you feel fear, or do you feel love when you're around that program and the people in it? Are you abstinent from the substance because you feel fear, or are you abstinent from the substance because you feel love for yourself and love from others? No matter what you do, even relapse. If you lay a foundation of fear for your recovery, it will not be long-term. The only long-term framework for recovery that brings out the full potential of you, the latent potential that's lying inside, is an environment of unconditional love. Ask yourself, am I feeling fear or am I feeling love?
