It’s important for every single person in recovery to feel empowered and inspired. We need to believe in ourselves if we want to accomplish anything in our lifetime – but it’s harder for people who struggle with addiction to believe in themselves than it might be for others. Sometimes, an addiction can feel stifling – it steals a person’s agency, and saps at their will. That’s why community is important for recovery.
Alone, addiction will consume you. Alone, addiction can destroy you.
But you’re not alone. And if you’re not alone, but with people who believe in you, then they can help you realize the importance of believing in yourself.
Ultimately, addiction is the journey of an individual fighting their way out of a persistent and oppressive cycle of addiction. You must accept your problem, make a commitment to fight the addiction, find a way to quit for good, and come to terms with all mistakes and actions so you can find peace for the future. It’s not just about being passionate and strong-willed – it’s about compromise, forgiving yourself, and seeing just how far your capacity for hope stretches.
Because of this, having others is important. It’s a long and difficult road ahead, and the support and motivation that others bring to the table is necessary if you want to make it through. To fight addiction, you’ll need your friends, you’ll need your family, and ultimately, you’ll need to understand community is important for recovery, and you want people you can trust and open up to.
Addiction And Isolation
Isolation feeds addiction. Think of the human soul as a mirror, and a shape within the mirror. The only way to clearly see ourselves is through the mirrors others help hold up to us. Some mirrors are twisted and warped, giving us a false image of ourselves.
Others are clear and truthful, sometimes painfully so. We have the power to shape ourselves, and change what we see in those reflections when we interact with others – but it’s not easy, and it takes time spent with other people to truly help us see the changes we make, and adjust.
When we’re alone, we can’t tell what the shape in our mirror looks like with nothing to reflect off of. It’s impossible for us to objectively look inside, without some sort of inner bias, either derogatory or complimentary. So, when addiction takes a hold of you and grips tight on your shape, its changes are hard to see alone.
Over time, the changes become more drastic – and with addiction comes regret, shame through stigma, and self-doubt. Even when masked with aggressive self-importance, these negative emotions feed negative behaviors, reinforcing a twisted self-image.
Without others to hold a mirror up to what we’re turning into, it’s difficult to realize that you’re hurting yourself – and that it’s time to turn around. And even when you know where the problem lies, for many it often feels too late to do something about it. That negativity grows without anything to counter it, without anyone to tell you differently.
In isolation, addiction feeds itself, and that’s why community is important for recovery. But if we can find others to help us see who we are, and what we must change, and others yet who can show us a version of who we might be, and what we can still do, then there’s hope, and that’s all anyone ever needs.
Why We Need Each Other
Some people help us see our flaws clearly, without judgment or bias. Some people help us see our strengths, and realize their potential. We all need people like that in our lives, to help us overcome some of life’s greatest challenges without cannibalizing our own spirit with negativity and self-doubt. Community is important for recovery not only to have a group of supporting people, but to see within ourselves what we might not be able to.
It’s not a selfish way to live – rather, it’s a reciprocal philosophy. Not only are you at the center of your own network of loved ones, but you’re part of someone else’s network. By aspiring to be the kind of person who can help others shape themselves into someone better, kinder, and more loving, you’re taking massive steps away from addiction and towards a life with more meaning and fulfilment.
We all need each other, in some shape or form. We need social bonds, both close and far, abstract and concrete. We need our partners and families, our friends, and closest loved ones – and we need greater concepts, like society and community. Understanding how these concepts affect an individual’s problem with addiction has to do with understanding why we all need to be social, and what we miss by struggling with loneliness.
Beyond those we care about the most, we need groups and communities into which we can belong. While having a family, or a family of friends is important, it’s equally important to feel that our lives are well-lived by having a greater impact on those around us – inspiring others in a recovery community to stay strong and stick to their treatment, for example. This sense of community is important for recovery and for long term success.
Why Your Recovery Needs A Support Group
A support group is more than a circle of people meeting regularly to discuss their problems. It’s an opportunity for people to accept their problem, and trust others enough to talk about it openly and honestly.
And with enough time, a support group is a place where people in long-term recovery can help change someone else’s life for the better, by giving them hope and showing them what can be done, and how what might seem impossible is, in fact, completely doable.
Support groups come in all forms. You could find a local independent support group, or one connected to an organization or treatment center. You can even turn your tightest circle of friends into a support group, and inspire them to tackle their own problems like you tackled addiction.
Community Is Important For Recovery And Continued Sobriety
Sobriety means to be clean, and sober – but fighting addiction is about much more than just seeking to stay sober. Addiction is a life-changing event, and there’s no coming back from it. The only way out, is forward and through. And when you’re done, you’ll be someone else. You have to be someone else in order to defeat addiction – and that can be both scary, and incredibly taxing.
This is because when addiction takes hold of a person, it becomes not only a source of grief and problems, but a coping mechanism for all those problems. It blinds people to what’s around them, and stunts a person’s ability to deal with life.
In recovery – and even in sobriety – coping without drugs whenever something happens is difficult, especially if it’s traumatic. But with the right people, and the right treatment, you can be ready to face any challenge in recovery. The key lies in finding that a community is important for recovery, and trusting that the community believes in you, and therein trusting yourself.