Recovering for Yourself

When I found out this month’s topic was Reasons to Recover, I surprisingly had a difficult time developing my thoughts and coming up with something to write about.

While I was caught up in my eating disorder, I tried multiple times to recover for external reasons. I wanted to make my parents happy, I wanted to get through college, I wanted to be a better friend – the list goes on and on. But after alcohol addiction became an issue for me, I didn’t believe I deserved to recover at all.

As terrible as it might sound, I couldn’t find a reason to even try to regain my health.

Not only had I completely destroyed my life, but I had also begun to affect the lives of those closest to me. My mom once pleaded with me in a fit of tears and heartbreak to recover for her sake because she couldn’t handle the pain involved with watching me slowly kill myself.

I tried my very best to get on the right track for her, but sadly, that wasn’t enough.

When you are engaged in addictive behaviors the way I was, it becomes nearly impossible to ever see a way out. The only thing that mattered in my life was getting my next fix and nothing was going to stop me until I found a way to get my hands on the alcohol I was craving.

I was living a life of denial.

After I finally hit my rock bottom and found myself in jail, I had two choices: I could stay behind bars for about six months or go to treatment. Talk about a wake up call.

Believe it or not, this was a very difficult decision for me to make. Entering treatment meant I would have to face all of the hurt and pain from my past; I would have to dig deep and recover for myself in order to change.

Thankfully, I did choose to enter treatment. For the first two or three months I was there, however, I didn’t believe I deserved to recover. Sure, I went along with the rules of the program and did what I was told, but that didn’t mean I was truly healing.

Everything changed about four months into my stay in treatment when we did a group exercise on reasons to recover. As I continued to go through the motions, I carelessly wrote down more external reasons to get better. When the therapist running the group looked at my list, she asked why I wasn’t on the list. Who me? Why would I deserve to recover? I had already completed ruined my life. What was the point?

The therapist then stopped the entire group from making their list of reasons to recover and asked if anyone had included themselves on the list. Only one person raised their hand. The therapist was shocked, but I didn’t understand why. Then she looked each of us in the eye and said: “If you aren’t willing to do this for yourselves, then it will never happen. Your loved ones might want it more than you do, but they cannot recover for you. Look within. You are your last hope.”

That was my “ah-ha” moment, if you will. Yes, I had made several mistakes in my past, but recovery gave me a fresh start. As hard as my loved ones tried to understand my addictions, I knew they never would. The only choice I had was to get healthy for me. It was time for me to believe in myself. If my loved ones believed I could do it, which they did, then I knew I could believe too.

Recovery is one of the most complex, painful, and exhausting things I will ever go through. Luckily, before I lost my life, I discovered the secret to regaining my health. I had to recover for myself; there are not enough external influences that could do it for me.

“Believe in Yourself” – three little words we have all heard countless times in recovery, but they might be the most powerful words out there.

Making the decision to recover for myself was the best decision I have ever made. I made the choice to value myself more than my addictions, and best of all, there’s no stopping me now.