Trusting the Process

Entering treatment can feel like culture shock.  You are leaving a life lived with your addiction, which probably consisted of a lot of… chaos.  Very little routine.  Your life probably was lived by wondering how you can get your next fix, then engaging in your addiction, and then trying to get your next fix.  And then put that on repeat, over and over and over.

That life has to feel really scary.  And empty.  And lonely.

Treatment can be hard for many, because suddenly your days are filled with structure at every turn.  Mealtimes, therapy, groups, even when you sleep and wake up.  It can be very difficult to just let go of all of your control, and completely commit to your treatment plan and goals.

But the longer you fight it, and the longer your keep allowing yourself to be angry at all the structure, the longer it will take you to really learn and grow and recover from your addiction.  When filled with anger about being in treatment, you may glean some wisdom here and there, but you won’t absorb much.  It is when you finally let go, and commit to the process, that those small gleanings of wisdom will turn to amassing so much knowledge and self-awareness in your journey of recovery, and that’s when all of the joy and relief comes from finally seeing that there is hope, and that there is actually a life waiting for you that can be free from the shackles of addiction.  And finally the structure of a life well-lived where you are bettering yourself, and learning about yourself, and repairing relationships… well, finally, that seems so much more enticing than the chaos and narrowness of a life rooted in an addiction that robbed you of everything beautiful and everything that matters in your life.

Trusting the process of treatment and recovery is scary.  And it isn’t easy.  There is a great deal of respect and admiration owed to the individual who lets go of their addiction and finds the courage to fix the areas in their life that the addiction damaged.

So, trust the process.  Trust that you may not know everything that is going to happen, and that many parts of treatment and recovery are hard.  If recovery were a simple thing, everyone would achieve it.  But it isn’t.  Recovery is hard.  It requires active participation to choose life over an eventual death, and to choose the beautiful over the ugly.  It is so much easier to choose addiction over recovery, but a life consisting of recovery is so much more full.  It is beautiful and it is fun and it is adventurous and exciting.  Sometimes it is sad, and hard.  That’s just life.  It isn’t perfect.  But trusting the process of treatment and recovery will give you tools so that you are equipped to deal with the hard stuff, the bad stuff, in life, so that you never need your addiction again.

Trusting the process means living a full, complete life.