When struggling with ongoing substance abuse, your journey is filled with both addiction and lying. If you’ve dealt with prescription opioid addiction, alcohol addiction, or even polysubstance abuse, it’s likely you’ve been dishonest with others at some point to cover up your struggles. But when you’re trying to achieve sobriety in recovery, you can no longer be dishonest if you truly want to succeed. Honesty in recovery is vital for you to stay the course, no matter how hard it may feel in the moment.
Addiction and Lying: A Bad Combination
Having a substance abuse disorder means you’re compulsively using a substance, so much that you need it to function. This means your alcohol or drug usage is pulling the strings, not you. Consequently, you’ve likely:
- Spent a majority of your time obtaining, using, or recovering from substances
- Engaged in increasingly risky behaviors to feed your addiction
- Neglected your personal, work, or school responsibilities in favor of your addiction
- Socially isolated yourself from others to use substances
- Missed out on favorite activities or hobbies in favor of your addiction
- Felt shame, frustration, or guilt about your addictive behaviors
All of these above experiences can wrap you up into a constant routine of favoring your addiction and lying about it to friends and family. Your life may be a mess as a result, and you’ve realized you have to make a drastic change. Maybe your lying and addiction were recently discovered by our spouse or family member. Perhaps your addiction has put you and your family into debt. No matter what, you’re wanting to turn things around and overcome your addiction. If so, it’s time to change your ways and embrace honesty in recovery.
The Impact of Honesty in Recovery
According to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, research shows that about 75% of people lie up to two times a day. Among those, 14% will lie to protect themselves, and 74% of lies are usually said to friends and family. Like others, you may have normalized lying on a routine basis. However, lying cannot remain your modus operandi along your recovery journey. You need to make healthy, positive changes in your life, and honesty in recovery is one of the most important. Here’s why:
Honesty in Recovery Protects You From Relapse
Looking back, lying often kept your addiction under wraps. If no one knew about your substance abuse, they couldn’t call you out on it or help you. So your addiction remained private and in control. In recovery, returning to your dishonest ways is a slippery slope to resuming your addiction. But practicing honesty in recovery, even when it’s hard, is a great relapse prevention strategy.
Honesty in Recovery Repairs Damaged Relationships
Addiction often ruins relationships with friends and family. To climb out of the relationship hole your addiction has dug, a sincere, direct apology to those you’ve hurt is a good place to start. Yet showing honesty in the recovery process also demonstrates that you can be trusted, setting the stage for mending and restoration in relationships. And you need to continue to be honest on a consistent basis as a way to strengthen those relationships further.
Honesty in Recovery Helps You Make Better Changes
Honesty and recovery pair well together on the road to reclaiming your life. Since you don’t just arrive and remain at sobriety, it’s something you need to work at continuously. Honesty allows both you and your support system to evaluate your progress more accurately. As a result, you can continue to modify your goals and make healthier changes as you work toward long-term sobriety.
How to Implement Honesty in Recovery in Your Everyday Life
Sure, addiction recovery can be a difficult process. But honesty in recovery creates healthy guardrails to help you stay the course through the highs and lows. So how can you practice honesty on a regular basis? Here are a few real-world ideas:
Invite Others Into Your Recovery Journey
The vulnerability required to seek support from your community may be scary. But showing honesty in recovery with others is critical to get the vital encouragement you need along the way. Overcoming addiction is something you can’t do in isolation; you need others to help you! Honesty allows you to get real support for your problems, navigate addiction triggers, and creates further connection with your friends and family.
Share Your True Feelings
Telling others that you’re OK when you’re actually not is doing yourself a disservice. Pent-up shame, guilt, frustration, and loneliness can leave you vulnerable to drug or alcohol relapse. Let honesty drive you to share how you’re really feeling with your accountability partner or support group. You can also embrace positive coping skills for these negative feelings, such as journaling, going outside, or expressing yourself through the arts.
Get Help from Addiction Treatment Professionals
Part of embracing honesty in recovery is realizing you can’t quit substance abuse through willpower alone. You need professional help. At Sana at Stowe in Stowe, Vermont, we offer compassionate, holistic drug and alcohol addiction treatment for people seeking recovery (like you!). By partnering with us, you can finally address the root causes of your addiction and achieve long-term sobriety. To learn more about our programs, call us today.
