Amber Hollingsworth (speaker/creator) gives short, practical guidance for early sobriety, emphasizing that addiction is fundamentally a "thinking problem". She advises shifting focus away from losses and restrictions toward what one will gain from recovery — planning activities, staying focused on reasons ('why'), and eliminating self-pity — as a core tactic for staying positive and motivated in recovery.
Chapters
It is way easier to think about what you can have, what you can put in your life than it is to think about what you can't have and what you need to take out of your life. Recovery is all about shifting your thinking. Remember, addiction isn't a substance problem or a behavior problem. It's a thinking problem. So we're going to begin to shape your thinking more in the right direction. What you need to do is think about what you're going to get. This kind of connects to that why question that we addressed a little bit earlier. Think about what it is that you're going to do, maybe what it is you're going to do after work in the afternoons, or what it is that you're going to gain as a result of your recovery. If you can stay focused on that, it's going to be so much easier than being preoccupied with what you can't do and how unfair it is and why other people can and you can't, and why can't you just be normal? All that thinking is negative and it's not going to lead to anything good. I know in a lot of ways this whole thing sort of sucks, but probably the number one thing about recovery is getting out of the self pity party. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Lots of people have all kinds of problems and illnesses and other afflictions that they have to deal with and this is yours. So instead of just one weenie whining around about what you can't have and you can't do, think about what you can have and what you can do and what you're going to gain as a result of this decision.
