Three Deep Recovery: When You Stopped the Addiction but Still Don’t Feel Recovered

I stopped the addiction, so why don’t I feel recovered?

That question can be discouraging. It can also be confusing. If the addiction was the problem, stopping the addiction should have solved the problem.

But what if the addiction was not the only problem? What if the addiction had also been busy managing something?

In the first article in this Three Deep Recovery series, I wrote about why relapse is predictable. In the second article, I wrote about what addiction was trying to manage. In the third article, I wrote about why long-term success in recovery isn’t enough. In the fourth article, I wrote about the question, “Is my addiction bad enough for deeper recovery?”

This fifth article is for the person who has stopped the most obvious addiction but still doesn’t feel recovered.

When Stopping Isn’t Enough

When someone stops the addiction and still suffers, it’s easy to start looking for an explanation. They may wonder if they missed something, did recovery wrong, lacked commitment, or failed to do enough.

Those conclusions make sense if they believed the addiction was the problem and stopping the addiction was supposed to solve the problem.

But the suffering that shows up after the addiction is stopped may be showing what the addiction had been helping to manage. Post-addiction suffering may point to shame-based beliefs.

Shame is the belief that I am anything less than whole and perfect. Once that belief is accepted as truth, it can begin forming conclusions such as, “I’m not enough,” “I’m too much,” “I don’t matter,” “I’m unlovable,” or “I have to become someone else to be accepted.”

Where shame-based beliefs are present, suffering follows. And that suffering must either be managed or addressed because the ongoing pain shame creates can become unbearable.

Addiction often becomes one way to manage that pain.

Post-Addiction Symptoms

Post-addiction symptoms include the distress, reactions, and self-management patterns that become more noticeable after the dominant addictive strategy is stopped, reduced, or controlled.

These symptoms may show up as defensiveness, fear, isolation, overachieving, heightened sensitivity, lower capacity, and a variety of self-management strategies.

By lower capacity, I mean a lower capacity to respond to life’s challenges, a lower capacity to tolerate intense emotions — our own or someone else’s — and a lower capacity to take risks outside our comfort zone.

These symptoms may be indications of what still needs to be addressed.

The addiction had been managing something. When the addiction is interrupted or stopped, what it had been managing may begin asking for attention.

My Own Recovery Showed Me This

I know this from my own recovery.

I was twenty years sober before I began to find deeper recovery. The 12 Steps helped me stop drinking, and I’m grateful for that. But for much of those twenty years, I was still organizing my life around managing myself.

I was sober, but I was also managing discomfort through substitute addictions to nicotine, caffeine, work, romance, sex, and involvement in the program itself. I had recovered from alcohol, but I had not yet recovered from what alcohol had been managing.

Those first twenty years mattered a great deal. But they were not the whole of recovery. They were the first layer.

Recovery Happens in Layers

Recovery happens in layers. The first layer is recovering from the addiction and its impact. The second layer is recovering from what the addiction was managing. The third layer is recovering the true self.

This article is focused on the movement from the first layer to the second.

Someone may have stopped drinking, using, gambling, overeating, acting out, or relying on another dominant strategy. But if they still don’t feel recovered, it may be because what the addiction was managing is now asking for attention.

This is one of the main reasons I created the Compassionate Recovery Project. People often know how to manage addiction, but they may not know how to address what addiction was managing. The program is designed to support the shift from self-management to compassionate self-leadership.

Compassionate self-leadership means shifting from self-management to compassionate self-awareness and curiosity. Instead of trying to control the reaction, we begin to notice it. Instead of shaming ourselves for having the reaction, we begin to understand what activated it. Instead of working harder to manage ourselves, we begin to relate to ourselves in a way that allows deeper recovery to begin.

How Free Do I Feel?

If recovery is measured only by length of abstinence, we may miss what is still unresolved. Abstinence may show that the first layer of recovery is working. The addiction and its impact may be reduced or interrupted. But if we want recovery beyond that first layer, we need another measure.

How free do I feel?

How free am I to feel my emotions, express my opinions and preferences, make choices about my relationships and career, give and receive love, ask for what I need, set healthy boundaries, and experience joy and creativity?

A life of self-management won’t yield freedom. Compassionate self-awareness and curiosity about automatic internal reactions begin to open a deeper recovery.

In this series of articles about addiction and recovery, there has been a common thread: addiction is not only a problem to stop. It is also a strategy to understand. When recovery moves beyond managing addiction and begins addressing what addiction was managing, freedom can begin to return.