Steps After Early Recovery: Answering What’s Next?

Every step of your recovery journey is important. From medical rehab to early recovery programs, what comes after helps define your long-term sobriety.

Take it from one of our sober living program alumni, Dom M. Before celebrating two years of sobriety, Dom struggled with alcohol addiction up until January 2019. His long history with alcohol includes multiple tries at sobriety by rehab, relapsing after a year sober, nearly dying with a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.3 after a car crash, and finally getting admitted to our program.

Dom’s Story and Recovery Background

Dom began drinking during his teenage years. Looking back, he knew he had a problem, having first entered rehab during his senior year of high school. Although at the time, the program proved unsuccessful, it established a baseline in his and his parents’ minds that he would need help in the future.

For Dom, addiction came in waves. He recognized how debilitating it could be and briefly sought help during times of crisis; however, addiction always seemed to affect him, even in times of success. He reflected on a point in his life when he moved back with his parents in his early twenties after failing out of university. Seemingly everyone from high school was well off except for him. His old friends had cars, careers, and finished college.

Even under his parents’ roof, his addictive behaviors did not cease. He frequently drove drunk, earned himself several DUIs, and fell into jail a few times. His depression was exacerbated by alcohol. His father, who also previously struggled with alcoholism, finally introduced Dom to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), where Dom achieved intermittent periods of sobriety.

Up until Dom finally found Real Recovery, he reflected on this part of his life with stupor. How and why was he acting in this way? The clear answer was: alcohol and addiction. Because addiction made Dom powerless over alcohol, he proceeded to unintentionally wreck his own life. Dom was at his wit’s end when he found us, and so were his parents. No longer wanting to be the people who enabled Dom, they asked for the help of our program.

How did Dom feel about early recovery with us? For him, “the first week was fuzzy,” but once his head cleared, he gave it his all due to the “gift of desperation.”

For Dom, “the most challenging thing early on in recovery was taking other people’s advice. Step-wise, the fourth was the most difficult for [him].”

What Is Early Recovery and Why Is it Important?

Early recovery is anywhere from the first few moments to the first few years of your recovery from addiction. The larger recovery community tends to mark the start of early recovery at six months to one year following the beginning of your sobriety.

What role does early recovery play in your life and why is early recovery so important? Early recovery affects the length and success of your sobriety. It determines if you will be able to handle a lifetime of sober living or if you will relapse once or more.

What parts of early recovery dictate your possible long-term sobriety success? You might find success in early recovery if you engage in the recovery community. For those that struggle with alcohol, that means attending 12-Step meetings, like AA. Similarly, that means attending 12-Step meetings run by Narcotics Anonymous (NA) for other substance users.

Learning from resources like AA’s Big Book or employing recovery-based coping strategies like mindfulness and meditation strengthens your chances for further success in your early recovery. To ensure your success in making it through early recovery and next steps, you want to remind yourself why you are making this change regularly.

What Steps Come After Early Recovery and Rehab?

Traversing early recovery, rehab, or a sober living program is certainly an achievement in and of itself. However, staying sober requires a lifetime of commitment.

When you undergo treatment for an addiction, you are not being handed a guaranteed fix-all. Rehab and sober living programs only provide you with the tools necessary for continued sobriety. You are the one who must ensure those tools do not go to waste.

To elaborate on this idea, imagine you are a gardener. A garden filled with vegetables, beautiful flowers, and other assortments of plant life does not grow itself. You are its maker. You need seeds, a trowel, a source of water, and so much more to successfully ensure the life of your garden. Even after your efforts come to fruition, you must tend to it; otherwise, all your efforts are for naught.

For your addiction recovery, what comes next? What steps can you take after early recovery and rehab that would help you maintain sobriety? How do you put these newfound tools to use? Are there other available resources you might not yet be familiar with?

The type of help you receive in post-early recovery is known as continuing support. There are several types of continuing support for treating addiction. Someone who has gone through medical rehabilitation, an inpatient treatment facility, or a recovery home will return to everyday life either aware or unaware of how to navigate it. Surrounded by friends and family and engaged in hobbies and work can make you feel triggered by your addiction or experience cravings unexpectedly.

Four types of continuing support after rehab and early recovery include:

#1. Therapy or Counseling

Speaking one-on-one with a professional helps you better understand the underlying issues you face daily. They help identify the reasons behind certain behaviors. For addiction, you work with a therapist to better understand its chemical dependence and how your lifestyle plays into it. Therapy acts as a non-bias third party for you to confide in about triggers, cravings, withdrawals, and why you are coping with alcohol or other substances. It lets you voice your struggles while providing quality constructive feedback about how you might address them.

Types of therapy that helps with this include:

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
• Contingency management (CM)
• Motivational interviewing (MI)
• Dialectal behavioral therapy (DBT)
• Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT)
• 12-Step facilitation

#2. Check-ups

If you suffered from addiction for an extended period, you most likely developed adverse health side effects as a result. Whether these side effects manifest as cardiovascular problems, weight gain or loss, sleeping problems, nerve damage, breathing issues, or any other development, regular consultations with a physician are key to deterring (and treating) further complications. Check-ups are a routine part of life without substance abuse. They promote you to stay in good physical shape, eat healthily, and develop healthy ways of coping and managing stress. A good standard for how often you might need a check-up would be two to four times per year and less as your sobriety progresses.

#3. 12-Step Groups and Other Recovery Groups

Recovery-based groups come in all shapes and sizes. You may have encountered a 12-Step group in the past. If not, you have heard of them. They are anonymous groups that follow a 12-Step structure for managing addiction. Even if you have fully progressed through every step, an integral part of 12-Step groups is the continuation of your involvement. Just as you might have been a sponsee, you can become a sponsor. By providing help to others first starting their recovery journey, you can better understand what part of the program works for you.

Another primary recovery group option is Self-Management and Recovery Training (SMART), which hosts “mutual support meetings [that] are free and open to anyone seeking science-based, self-empowered addiction recovery.”

#4. Support Groups

Once out of rehab or a recovery program, you will be back in the real world. Surround yourself with friends, family, and others you can confide in. Create your own support groups involving these people in your life. Especially since you have started on your recovery journey, those closest to you should be beacons of trust. For them to create a positive impact in your life, they must be understanding of your recovery journey.

A crucial part of living life to the fullest outside of your addiction is building new relationships. Give your mind a break from recovery-based activities, meet new friends and discover new hobbies. Garner new relationships by building yourself a new social life. These types of relationships help alleviate boredom and helplessness that you might have otherwise supplemented with substance abuse in the past. They act as alcohol and substance-free activities.

Celebrating 1 Year or More of Sobriety With Our Alumni

A big proponent of our recovery program is the integration of the 12-Step model. Part of that is the involvement of senior recovery members, meaning those who are alumni of our program. We believe that by continuing to be involved in others’ recovery journeys, you are bettering yourself in a way that would never have been possible if you were still under the influence. By doing this, many of our alumni are able to celebrate one year or more of sobriety.

We found that reaching the one-year marker is no easy feat; however, several common factors helped our alumni get there. Some of the common factors for successfully continued sobriety include:

• Sponsoring at least one newcomer whom they actively took through the 12-Steps within 90 days
• Attending at least three or more meetings per week (74% reported consistently attending five meetings per week)
• Regularly attended meetings at their home group and were active in their business meetings
• Building a solid social and support network to overcome potential relapse situations
• Maintaining a daily and weekly routine, including reading, meditation, and other stress-relieving activities
• Participating in recovery events, enjoying activities, and regularly hanging out with friends in AA/NA
• Contacting their sponsor daily or at least five times per week
• Regularly exercising is an essential tool to managing stress, improving mental health, building self-esteem, and staying healthy
• Understanding that relationships, money, and work were leading relapse triggers if they did not go to meetings or do any 12-Step work

Early recovery can span anywhere from the first few moments of your sobriety to the first few years. During that time, you learn to live life without alcohol or drugs. There are many obstacles to recovery. Getting sober and staying sober means rebuilding a broken life. There is no one “most difficult” obstacle; there are many. To confront those obstacles and to overcome them, you need support. Real Recovery Sober Living’s sober living program offers help at all stages of your recovery journey. We are a safe and stable community that thrives in an environment of like-minded men seeking long-term sobriety. Our sober living homes that are based in Florida’s greater Tampa Bay area act as a stop, second to medical rehab, on your recovery journey. We help you establish healthy, effective, and manageable ways of reintegrating back into the real world. For more information, please call us at (727) 290-9156.