People tend to become complacent or self-satisfied when they have completed a part of the whole. It's rather like someone saying they want some cake for dessert, then stopping with just the eggs in the bowl and saying, “Look, I'm making a cake. I think I'm going to take a break.” Please visit car recovery near me
No, you don't get the cake until you mix the eggs, milk, flour, sugar and spices in a bowl, grease and flour the cake pan, pour the batter into the cake pan and put it in the preheated oven for a specific amount of time. Then you can take it out, let it cool, put it on a rack, and ice it if you choose.
Then you have the cake.
Or you notice the grinding sound when you apply the brakes to the car and you decide you're smart enough to change the brake pads; how hard can that be? You jack up the car and loosen the lug nuts; then you find the slider bolts and expose the calipers …… So far so good.
Now, that pesky bolt doesn't come out, the caliper won't turn, and you have a mess. But you're sure you can get your brakes fixed cheaper than taking it to someone else and paying them because you believe you understand the talk about brake pads in the parking lot.
Resting on your accomplishments until all requirements are met is similar. Deciding that you know enough about any given subject before investigating all parts of it is both arrogant and foolish, and becomes a dangerous side of complacency in many cases involving addiction.
Without understanding your many character flaws and the potential harm you will experience as you continue to operate from them, you are setting yourself up for disappointment from friends and family, if not chemical relapse.
Without knowing and understanding your past life, you are allowing yourself to repeat the same self-defeating patterns and experience the same results, only this time, you are not on drugs and therefore you have no excuses for the results.
Without knowledge and understanding of goals and sub-goals, you allow yourself to keep wishing things were different.
Recovery is a tireless and ongoing exploration of self, changing and growing in awareness. Are you using half the time? Do you only fill your syringe but not use it? Did you only fill your pipe but not smoke it? Did you only fill the prescription but not take it? Is the bottle on the shelf unopened and covered in dust? If you are like most addicts and alcoholics, then you have probably used.
However, you will only explore and change a fraction of what is necessary to fully and authentically recover.
It is immature to feel complacent because you did not use at 90 days, 6 months, or 1 year. While not using drugs is one of the more difficult parts of the recovery process, it is not the only part.
You are just done with not using drugs. It's just the beginning; the egg in the bowl, or the car jacked up.
Recommitting to the recovery process
In recovery, it is necessary for everyone to recommit to the process of recovery. Learn to see times of slow growth or seemingly no growth as a time when you are more emotionally stable and at a low ebb, where you are not losing sleep over dramatic phone calls in the middle of the night, or where you are finally experiencing some peace in your life.
I have a friend with double-digit years who refers to these times as vacations, where recovery is not as difficult. Approaching peace in this way may mean that you are ready for your next adventure, setback or life; it means that you are truly grateful for the peaceful times in your life and understand that life and your recovery are subject to change.
Life is not static and recovery is not static
Just as life is not permanent, neither is recovery. There will be times of frenetic activity and times of little exercise, that's life and that's recovery.
So, when you find yourself wondering if you can stop working on yourself now, ask yourself if you are getting less out of your recovery than it might have been. Is some of your complacency because you have too much time on your hands?
Go to meetings early, show some new people a calm person, or be grateful that your life is now orderly, structured, and predictable.
Another downside to becoming complacent in your recovery is that you may make the mistake of labeling a low period as boring, start looking for some excitement, and then find yourself relapsing.
You have options in recovery that you never experienced in your addiction. Having a closet in your home will usually benefit from some reorganization, and the same is true for the mental and emotional “closet”. It's much better to clean it out a little more.
