Amber Hollingsworth presents a short lesson on the stages of change in addiction recovery (a continuum rather than a binary cured/not-cured). She defines and illustrates five stages — pre-contemplation (denial/unawareness), contemplation (ambivalence and bargaining), preparation (planning and initial steps), action (concrete behavior change), and maintenance (ongoing effort to prevent relapse) — and emphasizes that progress is non-linear and requires sustained effort and supports.
Chapters
Alright, now that you've faced your fears and you've gotten really honest with yourself, this lesson we're going to take a look at. Not the stages of addiction, that's what we looked at before, but the stages of change. These could be sort of like the stages of recovery. This is the getting better process. And just like addiction doesn't happen overnight, getting better doesn't happen overnight. It's not a black and white issue. It's not like I'm cured or I'm not. It's a continuum, the same way as addiction is. And for most people, the process of beating addiction, there's a lot of up and downs. Maybe it's a step forward and two steps back, and then three steps forward and one step back and that's okay. I don't want you to get discouraged now. I don't want you to take that to mean, you know, you got some freebie passes out there. You don't want to do that because pulling yourself back up is no fun. It's really hard. So don't take it that way. I'm just saying don't be upset if it still takes a little trial and error. Stage one of recovery is what they call clinically, they call it pre contemplation. It means you have an unawareness that there's a problem at all. So it's like, I don't know what you're talking about. People are crazy. Like, I hardly even do it or I just do the same amount everyone else does. And you, you people are just being all uptight and I don't, I don't even know what y' all are thinking. Complete denial, right? Well, good news is you're probably not in that one because you're watching this video. So, hey, we're nowhere, at least past stage one. And stage two is called contemplation, which is the fancy way of saying thinking about it. So it's like, okay, maybe I have problem, but it's not that bad. Or, okay, yeah, I get a little ahead with this, but I'm not like Johnny over there, you know, so it's like there's an admission of some level of problem, but maybe there's a reluctance to say that it's addiction or alcoholism or that it's some level of severity. Or maybe it's like, okay, I have an addiction, I have a drinking problem, but I don't need to do X, Y or Z. So it's like a foot over here in the, like, acceptance stage and a foot over here still in the I don't know about that stage. That's called the contemplation stage. And it is completely normal. And this is the stage where most people do all that bargaining that we talked about in the last video, all that trial and error process, all that. Can I drink just a couple of drinks? Can I drink just occasionally? Can I drink and smoke weed but not use cocaine? You know, like I said, it's those bargains. Now, I'm going to tell you a little secret here. Remember, you are completely in charge of everything's going to happen. I don't even see. I can't see what you're thinking. I'm not asking you these questions in person and I can't see what you write. So this is all you. But I'm going to go ahead, I'm just going to give you the shortcut, right? I'm going to give you the hack. Almost all the people that end up coming to see me, I'm not saying everybody, what they end up figuring out from all those bargains is that it really just doesn't work, right? Or that, okay, it works sometimes, but sometimes it doesn't work. And when it doesn't work, it's real bad. Or they figure out, like, yeah, I can do it, but it's like hard all the time and I'm just like, willpowering it and I freaking hate it and I'm miserable. Or they figure out if I just drink a little or use a little. I don't even like that. What's the point? Because, you see, the nature of saying I have an addiction problem means there's a level of unmanageability there. Meaning you can't always predict it. Meaning it's causing you trouble. Meaning that you don't have complete 100% control over that behavior once you start the behavior. So like I said, this is not me telling you you gotta stop completely, 100%. By all means, if you haven't tried something and you think it might help, you go do that. Because if not, it's gonna be in the back of your head and you're gonna be thinking, well, maybe I could do that. You know, go ahead and get those bargains out of the way and maybe it'll work. Occasionally something does, but for the most part, people figure, honestly, that's the hard route. And eventually they decide, yeah, I think I just wanna be done with this totally. Now the next stage is called preparation. And so that's when you start to actually put. That will make it possible to make changes. And we're Going to talk about some of those things that you could be putting in place in just a little bit. And in another section, maybe preparation might mean making some phone calls or talking to a buddy who got sober, or, you know, just doing a little investigation, some looking up Amber's YouTube videos or googling something, reading some articles, that kind of thing. It's kind of like doing some thinking, Kind of like what you're doing right now, this very moment. Look at that. You're in preparation, at least in preparation right now. After preparation comes action. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where you actually start to change some things. And some of that is changing some things about the way you think, what you do, where you go, who you hang out with. Maybe it means you get some help of some sort. Maybe it means you get some support, something. You take some actual action steps to make sure that you're able to make the changes that you want to make. And then the last stage is called maintenance. And maintenance is especially important when it comes to addiction, because just because you decided it was a problem and you took some action steps to fix it, if you don't maintain that current way of thinking, you will slide back to old behaviors, because you've been doing that stuff for a really long time. So all that thinking and doing and using and whatever, is that your automatic? That's your autopilot. So for you to not be doing that, it takes, like, a lot of conscious effort, right? You got to stay focused on it in order to not do that. Because if you lose your focus on it, it's just an automatic slide. Kind of like if your wheels on your car are misaligned, like if you don't keep your hands on the wheel, you're going to be sliding left, and eventually you're going to go off the road, that sort of thing. So even after you take steps, you get better, you get your life on track and where you want it. You're going to have to do some things to maintain that. And don't worry, I'm going to give some options and some things that you might think about, some that may work well for you and some that don't.
