Alcoholism, drug addiction, and the struggle to get clean and sober are some of the issues that I explore regularly on this site.  If you want to know how to live a clean and sober life and recovery from alcoholism and addiction, then you should explore the archives and see what there is to offer here.

Basically I advocate an holistic approach to recovery that treats the entire person instead of just one aspect of that person.  For example, 12 step programs focus on the spiritual side of things and offer a strictly spiritual solution for overcoming alcoholism and addiction.  This is a limited perspective in my view and if you follow that philosophy exactly then you might be cutting yourself off from other avenues of growth.  Addiction affected us in many ways, certainly more than just spiritually, so the solution for recovery must be more than just spiritual.  The spiritual solution ignores the more comprehensive holistic approach.

I also think that there is power in the idea of creative recovery.  People who are not creating a new life for themselves in recovery are more prone to relapse, in my opinion, because they are not striving for anything in particular and they do not have purpose and goals to guide them.  My opinion is that we have to go further than simply staying clean and sober in order to create this life for ourselves that we were truly meant to live.

The issue of recovering from drug and alcohol addiction is something of a self esteem issue.  We need to feel good about ourselves if we are to stay sober.  If we do not truly value our life and where we are at today, then we will not be likely to stay clean and sober over the long run.  How do we build this health self esteem?

First of all by caring for ourselves.  When we take better care of ourselves, then we will place a higher value on our own life.

Second we need to push ourselves to grow as a person.  If we invest in our own growth, then we can raise the value that we place on our life.

Third we can help others in recovery, or simply help others, period.  If we help others then we boost our own value and our self esteem.  If we know that we have helped other people then we know that we have intrinsic value that others cannot take away from us.