As any recovering addict will tell you, you are never going to call yourself ‘recovered’ because, in reality, you never will actually be ‘healed.’ Or, to put it in words of a common cliché, once an addict always an addict. Unfortunately, that is about as absolute a truth as you will ever find and so it stands to reason that the challenge you will face from this point forward is that there will always be more challenges on the road ahead. Sadly, there’s no way around it. So then, if you will always have challenges, what are they and what do you need to give you the strength to face them day in and day out?

The First Things You Need – Knowledge and Understanding

Before you can face any challenge, you need to understand it and all that you will be faced with. When it comes to the ultimate challenge of addiction, you need to get over your denial, call it what it is, ADDICTION and you have just taken its power over you away. No, it isn’t quite that easy but you can begin taking steps once you have named it for what it is, ADDICTION, and then you can move on to see how to begin recovery. Denial does you no good.

Recovery Is a Journey

One of the biggest challenges you will need to face is also the fact that recovery is a journey. You will often be told that addiction is a disease, and it is very much a disease, but not a disease with a cure. This is a challenge you must be ready to face. When a coke addict enters cocaine rehab, they need to be made aware that this is a place where they are given the map for their journey. It will lead them ever towards their destination but they will always be on that journey of recovery. You never hear an addict say “I’m a recovered coke addict,” or “I’m a recovered meth head.” Instead, you will hear them say, “I’m a recovering addict. I have been clean for…” and they progress to tell you how long it’s been since they’ve had a fix. Every step along the way to that mile marker they’ve reached was just one leg of the journey – a ‘one day at a time’ event in their lifelong journey.

In the End, It’s All about How Badly You Want to Go on That Journey

So then, to sum it all up, what you need is to lose the denial and name your disease for what it is, ADDICTION. You are an addict and you will need to fully accept that and understand that the road to recovery is a lifelong journey. Giving a name to your addiction helps enlighten you, but it’s not an end-all cure. Even if you are clean until the day you die, you will always have those moments where you crave your drug of choice. That’s the disease we spoke of. It isn’t curable but it is manageable.