Common mistakes people make in addiction recovery

“FAILURE. Relapsed hard. Back to square one” – Journal entry, Friday 31st October – Friday 9th November, 2014

“I hate myself so f**king much. Sort your F**KING S**T OUT” – Journal entry, Wednesday 6th January 2016

“Really sick to f**king death of this cycle” – Journal entry, Thursday 21st December 2017

I used to believe, like so many people struggling with addiction, that my “failure” to follow through on the promises I’d made to myself and those around me meant I was weak, stupid, impulsive, undisciplined, pathetic. Possessed, right to the core, by moral defects that surely no one else on the planet had. I believed, like so many before me, that it all came down to “willpower” and nothing more.

Having since worked through this stuff over time and spoken with hundreds of people in SMART Recovery, I’ve since learned that are some common psychological mistakes people make when trying to make lasting change. Let’s break them down.

1. Believing “willpower” is enough

If willpower worked, we’d all be millionaires with 8% bodyfat. It’s great to get you started, but alone it’s not enough. Research not only backs this up, but shows that strategies are actually more important than willpower when it comes to self-control (Snoek, Levy & Kennett, 2016). “I’ve got this” is a great mantra for building your confidence before a job interview, but if you’re looking at addiction recovery, you’re asking for trouble. Sooner or later you will get stressed, bored, tempted, angry, and so on - create a plan to support you in these moments.

2. Shaming yourself when willpower fails

We live in a society where “personal choice” is king - great for the free market, but not so great if you believe it’s the only thing driving your addictions. Most of us massively overestimate how much free will we have, and then shame ourselves when willpower doesn’t work. This leads to a lack of self-worth and a belief that “I’m broken”, leading to more substance abuse, and the cycle continues. If you’re living with a mental health disorder, burnout from work, unemployment, a social circle that revolves entirely around binge-drinking, unresolved trauma, or any of the other countless reasons your bender life has gone well past its use-by-date, then your capacity for “free will” is not what you think. And there’s no shame in that.

3. Not giving yourself enough credit

Imagine someone is drinking a bottle of vodka every night. They decide to stop, they go 29 days out of the next month without touching a drop, then get drunk on day 30. They then focus on the one day they got drunk rather than the 29 days they didn’t, they create a huge story out of what it means, and they believe they have "failed". In reality, that's still a 96.7% success rate from a starting point of zero. Remember that most people in recovery have a lapse at some point. It’s perfectly normal, it's more common than not, and it doesn't mean you're right back where you started.

4. Not introducing new habits to replace the old ones

There is a term in recovery called the “dead person’s goal”, which means that “stopping drinking” is a goal that a dead person can achieve more easily than an alive person. If you’re habitually drinking, getting high, gambling, watching pornography, or whatever your vice is, for 10, 20, 30-plus hours per week and you decide to stop, there will be a deafening silence unless you replace it with something positive. Nature abhors a vacuum - find something new (not another drug) or you'll go back to what you know.

5. Having unrealistic expectations about how you will feel in recovery

You might hear amazing and inspiring stories of recovery and believe that life on the other side must be infinitely better than where you are now. This may be the case, but not overnight. In fact, there is often a period of depression following a change, and a genuine grief in letting go of certain places, habits and friends (for many of us, booze and drugs were a close “friend” for a very long time). Understand this is temporary.

6. Having unrealistic expectations about new activities

Similar to point #5 - activities and relationships that replace the old ones will never give the same rush as chemicals designed to hijack the brain’s pleasure centres. What’s more, a lot of them take time and patience before you see any payoff whatsoever. By contrast, the very nature of addiction is “I want to feel good now”, which can leave people underwhelmed by their replacement activities at first. Have patience, try different things, and over time it will be worth it.

What tips do you have for people looking to make healthier changes in life? Drop a comment below!

References

Snoek, A., Levy, N. & Kennett, J. (2016) Strong-willed but not successful: The importance of strategies in recovery from addiction. Addictive Behaviours Reports, 4, 102 - 107.