Building Basic Structure and Routine in Early Recovery, IV

4. Make meetings a priority: While you were in treatment, you learned the value and necessity of attending 12-step group meetings such as AA and NA. These fellowships are comprised of others in recovery that are committed to being clean and sober and to helping fellow members do the same. Most addiction treatment specialists say that recovery is only as successful as the quality of the support network the recovering individual creates and maintains. The truth is that some people may be able to complete treatment and make it on their own for the first few weeks of recovery, but this is like Sisyphus attempting to carry the massive boulder uphill: sooner or later he, the boulder, and everything else will come crashing down. The burden is just too great. Why shoulder such self-imposed difficulty? It’s so much easier to go to meetings, listen to the stories and accounts of what worked for others who may have gone through similar circumstances (although each person’s recovery is unique) and adapt what you hear to your own life.

Finding the meeting location that feels most comfortable to you may take some doing. But there’s nothing that says you have to stick to one location. I recommend varying your meeting locations, days, and times. Not only will you be keeping things fresh, you will also avoid becoming bored by seeing the same people and possibly hearing the same stories over and over again. When you do find a meeting location where you “gel” with the other members, this can become your home base meeting group, the one you return to at least once every week.

You may have heard that Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous has a semi-official rule about attending 90 meetings in 90 days. It’s even referred to as the “90-in-90 rule,” according to some written accounts of personal recovery. What it means is that the individual who is new to recovery should make it a practice to attend a meeting every day in the first 90 days. This can be one meeting each day for the full three months, or it can sometimes take the form of 2 to 3 meetings a day (morning, afternoon, and evening). Doubling or tripling up on meetings may even be a means of preserving your sanity during especially troubling times or when you feel a crisis coming on. However you do it, and whether or not you hear about the 90-in-90 rule, you should make attending 12-step meetings a priority. This is one of the activities on your daily schedule that takes priority over everything else – especially in early recovery.

Here's a fact you'll want to continuously remind yourself of at this point, staying clean and sober is your number one goal, so just keep moving forward and accepting this period of early recovery as exactly what you needed, when you needed it. The payoff is HUGE!

More to come, be well.