Adventures in Recovery

While entering recovery often comes as the result of a crisis, continuing in recovery can be a grand adventure. It is first of all an adventure into:

Sobriety

Sobriety is the thing that is most illusive for a sex addict prior to entering recovery. Through “white knuckling” it, some persons are able to stop acting out for days, weeks, months, and sometimes years. But they know that the acting out will return. Upon entering recovery, a sex addict soon discovers that he no longer has to rely on a “white knuckle” approach to maintaining sobriety. Rather, he is able to appropriate tools that make long-term sobriety possible. And for the person who has not been sober in a great while—perhaps for all of their adult life—maybe for as long as they remember, sobriety itself is an adventure. Finding out that they can go a week, then a month, then several months without acting out, is an immensely affirming experience. But if sobriety is the goal, the journey is not much fun. It is like walking through a desert. Lots of sand, heat, sun, and not much fun. Therefore, the goal is not sobriety but recovery.

Recovery

If that is the goal of this adventure, what exactly is recovery?

Recovery is So Much More Than Sobriety!

Recovery Means:

• New boundaries
• New traffic patterns
• New friends
• New behaviors
• New time management skills
• New life

It Also Means an End to:

• Isolation
• Narcissism (admittedly this is probably a work in progress)
• Self-loathing
• And many other things

Adventure in Recovery is an acknowledgment that recovery begins with a quest for sobriety but then continues throughout life, long after there is no longer a daily struggle to not act out. Adventure in Recovery is embracing the concept that throughout life, the goal of the journey is to be our best self.