When Can You Stop Going to 12 Step/Recovery Meetings?

How long am I supposed to keep going to all these recovery meetings, therapy sessions, coaching appointments? Do I ever get to just put this whole mess behind me? I mean, thinking about it all the time just seems to be making it worse. It's just reminded me of a bunch of mistakes I've made, and I would really like to just start a new chapter. If you've ever said anything like that before or felt that way before, you're not alone. Lots and lots of people feel this way. It's a pretty common thought in the recovery process. And to be honest with you, a lot of people in the whole, like, addiction recovery universe will tell you, like, well, you need to keep going to meetings forever and stuff like that. And if you don't, you're gonna relapse. But that's not exactly true. So let's look at the reality of how long do you need to keep working on this recovery stuff before you can just move on? For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth. I've been helping people and families overcome addiction for almost 20 years now. And I've learned that the only way to beat addiction is through strategy. You have to stay ahead of it. It's about making sure you stay five step of addiction. So let's get back to our question. Do you have to go to this recovery stuff forever? Well, there's good news and there's bad news. I don't know if you're like me, but I always like to get the bad news first so that at least I end on the good news. So let's do it that way. The bad news is, is that, yes, you're going to have to continue to work on yourself forever. The good news is it doesn't have to be any certain type of working on yourself. Like, for example, you don't have to go to 12 step meetings forever. So let's go one layer under the surface of this issue and figure out what's the truth of this whole matter so you can make decisions about what's best. You have you ever heard of the law of entropy? Basically, it's like this scientific concept that means that anything left alone will continue to move toward disorder. Or like, deteriorate or regress, if you want to use that word, further and further and further. Kind of like if you don't use it, you lose it. Like, for example, if you don't use your muscles, your muscles will atrophy. If you leave a physical object out in the elements and you don't do anything with it, it will begin to break down and deteriorate. It's the natural order of the universe. So unless you're actively to repair or strengthen something, it's going to get weaker and weaker and weaker. But that's true of all of us and really of all things in the universe. Recovery is like standing on a down moving escalator. If you're not taking steps forward, you're moving backwards. That's actually a really good way to remember it. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be in therapy forever or that you have to go to 12 step meetings forever. In fact, I don't want you to look at it like, oh, this is like my punishment for having that addiction. I've got to do it forever. That's not what I'm talking about at all. But I'm saying is just like, you should probably exercise forever. This is like emotional, mental and spiritual fitness. Think about it like that. You want to constantly be growing. This is for your own sense of self, for your own life happiness, not because you were bad and you had an addiction. And you have to keep doing these things forever, find what works for you, what makes you feel like the best version of you, what makes you excited and fueled. Creative and growing. It's all about building and growing. When we're not growing, when we're not allowed to use that creative part of ourselves, we become more and more dissatisfied, sometimes to the point of depression. And if you let that happen to you, chances of you relapsing do go way up, because it's really, really easy to take all that unhappiness and fall back into old habits. So, yes, you need to keep moving forward with your recovery forever. But you can design any plan you want to for it. It's like exercise. Yes, you need to exercise forever, but does that mean that you need to get on your exercise bike every single day for the rest of. No. You could do different kinds of exercise programs. You could pick something new. You could decide that you weren't gonna go to the gym, you were gonna hike in the mountains. That's kind of what I mean. The key here is don't think of it like punishment. Think about it like self growth that you actually look forward to. Now, in case you're wondering what are some kinds of things you could do or resources you could access in order to keep moving forward, I'm gonna put a link right up here to a video that will help you have even more ideas about things to keep in your personal growth arsenal.