excerpt from Patrick and his Spiritual River blog;
always a practical, real life view of recovery...
Now as I progressed in my recovery and started to learn some new things and have some different experiences, this whole “balance” thing started to creep into my life. Looking back, I can see that I had a fear of losing my obsessive focus, and I though that allowing some balance and variety into my life might cause me to relapse. This turned out to be false, and achieving some level of balance has turned out to be a very healthy thing for me today.
I like to talk about the holistic approach to recovery and I think that holism is a key to long term sobriety. If you are just getting clean and sober though, a laser focus on not picking up a drink or a drug and concentrating on all things recovery will probably serve you well. Certainly many who have relapsed in early recovery could say that they did not focus heavily enough on recovery. I also believe the strategy of overwhelming force helps validate these ideas.
Early recovery = focus.
Long term recovery = balance.
2 comments:
i would have to agree. after all, recovery is about living a full life without an obsession of alcohol. and that would involve re-introducing some aspects that are not adviseable in the beginning, but are manageable as you get stronger.
This makes a lot of sense to me. I'm looking forward to staying sober long enough to move into a more balanced, holistic life. I think that is part of the reward for the (necessary) intense focus of earlier recovery.
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