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How do we go about tracking our progress while in addiction recovery? As you work your way through recovery, it’s easy to lose sight of what you’ve achieved. While focusing on the future is important for a successful recovery, it’s also important to to occasionally sit down and evaluate how far you have come. The road to addiction recovery is not always a smooth one, and keeping track of your journey can act as a source of inspiration and insight.

Addiction recovery can be complicated in the fact that no two recoveries are the same. For this reason, comparing benchmarks or judging one’s own progress in light of another recovering addict is rarely a good idea. But it’s important to remember that sharing one’s recovery experience with others and exploring recovery through various social settings can increase the likelihood of a long-term successful recovery. Tracking your recovery progress can act as a great motivator, improve active participation in your own recovery, and help you stay on track when you hit the occasional low point.

Here are some ways to track your recovery: Read more →

To Date or Not to Date? That is the Question.

Managing new, romantic relationships while in recovery, especially in the early stages of your recovery, can present some challenges. Beginning a romantic relationship while in recovery can cause unnecessary stress and might put you at risk for relapse.

It is recommended that people in the first year of recovery avoid entering romantic relationships. The focus needs to be on staying in recovery. According to SelfGrowth.com, 10 Reasons to Avoid Romantic Relationships while in Early Recovery:

1. Romantic relationships take the focus off of recovery.
2. Romantic relationships take the focus off of the individual.
3. Romantic relationships increase the potential for relapse due to emotional intensity.
4. There is too much potential for underlying issues, projections, and complexes to be creating the attraction.
5. Low self-esteem and the bargaining process of relationships make early recovery a tenuous time to enter a relationship.
6. There is a strong likelihood of outgrowing the relationship quickly.
7. In early recovery you do not really know yourself yet.
8. In early recovery you may not have a healthy understanding of what love is yet.
9. There is a strong possibility of the individual in early recovery acting on, “I want what I want when I want it.”
10. In light of advice to the contrary, if you decide to enter a relationship, you are working your own program. This is self-will, and this is an addictive behavior.

When people first begin recovery, they are essentially rebuilding their life. They are reassessing all that they want in this world and of themselves. It is a time when people are getting to know themselves again. This is another reason why it might be better to wait to enter new, romantic relationships until you have spent a significant amount of time in recovery. How can you choose the right partner, when you are still getting to know yourself in your new phase of life?

Time management doesn’t seem like a necessary tool for recovery, but it’s an important one. When addicted, a large amount of time is spent on fantasizing, planning, engaging, hiding, and recuperating from one’s addiction. So once in recovery, time that was once spent on addiction needs to be filled with healthy activities. This is to avoid feeling overwhelmed and to avoid empty time slots or unproductive time periods, which may trigger relapse. A successful recovery will involve learning skills of time management in a way that produces healthy growth.

Here are some tips for effective time management: Read more →

A dry drunk is someone who no longer uses drugs or alcohol but still behaves in a dysfunctional way. The term “dry drunk” refers more to a condition or syndrome than an individual. Remember, being an addict isn’t just about the use of drugs or alcohol, it is also about patterns of behavior. So how does one avoid becoming a dry drunk while in recovery?

There are usually two ways that someone fits the criteria for dry drunk syndrome while in recovery. The first is they remove drugs or alcohol but do very little to address or change their internal or emotional behavior. The second describes someone who was abstinent and on a productive recovery path but slowly returns to unrealistic or unhealthy modes of thinking and acting (this also puts them at risk of relapse).

Some common attitudes or modes of thinking associated with dry drunk syndrome are: Read more →