Are you stuck in your recovery? What I mean by that is, you don’t think you’re ever going to get out of it, or you don’t know how to get out of it. You don’t know how to move on with your life. Well, today I’m going to give you three tips on how to move beyond recovery.

I wrote a book called How to Stop Relapsing Study Guide: Biblical Guidance to Move Beyond Addiction Recovery, Receive Permanent Healing, and Fulfill God’s Plans for You. Let’s say you’ve been in your recovery group for anywhere from six months to six years or more. In the back of your mind, you’re probably thinking, I don’t think this is normal to stay in a group that does nothing but rehash what’s been going on.

Sure, you help newcomers. And when you’re first in the group, you feel relief that there’s other people like you who know the struggles you go through. But that’s not where we’re meant to stay. God wants us to move on with our life.

But how? How do you change from being stuck in this small world? Perhaps you’ve lost all your friends, your family, and all you have is this world of support groups, perhaps a sponsor, and it’s just a daily routine you do over and over and over.

You’ve lost your joy in life, and you’re not even sure you could get it back. Your constant fear is one of, Am I going to relapse again? Am I ever going to get out of this? Well, I got out of my 10 year addiction back in 1990, and I’ve never relapsed. I got over my pity parties. I dealt with the underlying issues that caused me to escape.

Tip #1 – Decide Where You Want to Go In Life

The first tip is, where do you want to go in life? And you might ask, “well, what does that have to do with leaving recovery?” Where you want to go involves your passion in life. What do you want to do? What do you think God has called you to do? What’s your calling in life?

What is it that really excites you? It causes you to get up early in the morning or stay up late. You could talk all day about it. You could daydream about it. What is that? You may not know. You may at one time had a dream, but it’s been put on the back burner. Well, I want you to take it off the back burner today and start thinking about it.

I want you to start writing with pen and paper, not your computer about what do you want to do with your life? What are your dreams? What is it that God has called you? Plus, what are your personal desires in life? Now, these should be desires that you can accomplish by yourself and God.

Not, once I get married, I want to do this. Once I have a house, I want to do this. Once I have an income at this level, then I’ll be happy. No. What can you do today to make yourself happy? Just start thinking about the dream that God has put in your heart. You may think, well, that’s too big. I,  just don’t know how to do it.

That’s fine. God does, God knows how to do it, and He’ll show you. But you got to have trust in him. You have to have faith, and you have to believe that it is possible. And that belief comes by reading your Bible, by praying with God to God, listening to him, listen to his response. So, having a future hope in your life is what’s going to be able to help you to get out of your recovery. It comes as a byproduct of using your dream to reach out to love and help others.

Now, when I say recovery, I’m trying to shift your focus from “not doing the addiction” to focus on your dreams for your future. Let me share a huge insight. We think in pictures, but when you think about not doing your addiction, the addiction is what your mind sees. And even though you don’t want it, that is what your mind is going to try to bring about.

The Bible says what you think about is what’s going to happen. Look at the beginning of creation when God created the earth. I’m sure He had to think before He spoke everything into creation. And that’s what we have to do today. When you think about your future, it stirs up positive emotions—emotions that will pull you into your future, that will give you a hope and a solid ground to stand on.

Now you may not have thought about this, You may have thought that you have to spend the rest of your life in support groups. You don’t. Now let’s talk about recovery support groups. Yes, we need to be around people. We need people. That’s what we were created for. God created us for connection with people.

If you go to church and they have a home Bible study or a men’s group or a women’s group, I would suggest you join them so that you’re around other people.

Now I know that AA emphasizes you coming back to help other addicts, but if that’s not your gift or your calling, you need to be doing your gift or calling because that is what will give you the positive emotional fuel to keep going in the right direction. If your gift or calling is to help the needy, or if you’re a plumber, go find somebody who needs your services and offer to do it for free. Again, you need to be doing something you’re passionate about, your hobby or your calling, to reach out to love and serve others.

That’s the ultimate goal. It got me out of my 10 year relapse by addiction. It was when I stepped in, I believed God, and He showed me the way. I still remember going down, uh, 7th Street in Phoenix, Arizona, back in the early 1990s, and thinking this high of serving God is better than any high I got from using pain pills or drugs.

Tip #2 – Control Your Emotions

Are you able to control your emotions? Because a lot of our addictions are brought about by us not wanting to, or not knowing how to, handle our negative emotions. These negative emotions can be from childhood experiences, or maybe a traumatic event.

It could be PTSD from going to war and seeing all that bad stuff. Do you have any idea what your underlying issues are, is the first thing. Do you know how to deal with them, through forgiveness and so forth? And I do cover this in my book, How to Stop Relapsing.

It’s not complicated. But it is hard, unless you make a commitment to trust God as you go through it. He’ll get you through it. Jesus says to cast all our cares upon Him. Well, our negative emotions from our past are our cares. Then I ask God to help me to forgive the person. And also help me to stop rehashing and getting myself emotionally upset.

Some of us who have been in our addiction for a long time, mine was 10 years long, we get in the habit of getting ourselves stirred up emotionally, getting ourselves down into pity parties. And then it’s an endless cycle that we find ourselves in.

Pretty soon our whole world just seems to be crashing in on us. We lost our friends. We lost our family, and other important relationships. All we have is me, myself, and I, and the few people in a recovery support group who understand what I’m going through. But God says there are people who understand what you’re going through.

Whether it’s temptation to use your drug or drink, a temptation to steal, or temptation to lie, there are ways of handling temptation. So there is a way to get our emotions under control. What happens a lot is a person goes into a rehab facility and some people leave right after detox, because all those negative emotions come up, and they’ve not been taught how to handle them.

Many are taught “coping skills,” which is only a Band-Aid approach, and doesn’t deal with the root problems that eliminate the uprising of the emotional turmoil.  If you leave a rehab facility and you don’t know how to handle your emotions, the first person or event or situation that triggers you, you’re off to relapse. Despite how much you don’t want to.

We need to learn how to stop the internal battles we go through. Once we learn how to manage the internal battles, we don’t have to be concerned about relapsing. As I mentioned earlier, if your church has a Bible study or another type of small group, I suggest you get involved as soon as possible. The more you learn the Word (the Bible), the more you will understand how God acts, how he expects us to act, and how we can change.

Tip #3 – Find Emotionally Healthy Friends

Do you have emotionally healthy friends? Now remember, you may be in this little bubble of me, myself, and I, and the recovery people. There’s probably no emotionally healthy people there. If there are, it’s a rarity. So where do you find these people? And why is it necessary?

Why? Because we need to see how other people handle problems and don’t get pulled into drugs like we did.

We need to observe how they are able to handle situations. Ask them. Say, “hey, you know, I saw this happen and you, you were cool. You didn’t get mad. You didn’t blow up. How come? And how can I do that?”

To get out of your recovery mode, you need to bring other factors into your life—positive ones, positive people, positive environments, such as church and home Bible studies.

You can go on meetup.com and find a group in your area that does hobbies that you like. It doesn’t have to be Christian based, just be around other people. And again, being around other people also gives you the ability to see there is still some good in your life that you can do. There’s still some fun you can do. That’s why you need to be around emotionally healthy people.

Will they come from your family? At this stage, probably not. Although they want you to change and you want to change. While your family loves you, most of them have not given up on you, and it’s going to take time to restore your relationships.

They have to learn to trust you, and you have to learn to trust yourself. You know, it’s not easy to, because when we say we’re going to do something and we don’t, we come down on ourselves real hard. That’s a fact. We all do that. Not just people in recovery. So becoming a woman of your word or a man of your word is going to be very important in a large part of your recovery.

Push through the difficulties to make your dreams come true. You’re not going to be handed your dreams on a silver platter. It takes work, it takes the right work, and it takes hard effort over time with God guiding you and directing you.

Here is a review of the three tips:

• Where do you want to go in life? Write down your dreams.
• Can you control your emotions? Learn how. What does the Bible say? Do some research.
• Do you have emotionally healthy friends? Where can you find them? I’m not asking you to stop your 12 step group right now. That will come in time. I don’t want you to be into solitude completely if you don’t have emotionally healthy friends.

But for right now, I just want you to know everything is possible with God. He loves you so much. Until next time, God bless you and have a great day.