Honesty In Recovery | Importance of Honesty In Addiction Recovery

Everybody lies every now and then. Whether it’s a little white lie to help avoid upsetting a loved one, or something a little more serious to help your own interests, lying is just part of being human. Unfortunately, it’s also the component that allows addiction to thrive. In order to feed an addiction, a person who suffers from this disease will have to lie to their friends, colleagues, and loved ones in order to avoid the consequences of their lies. When it comes to finding treatment, honesty in recovery is essential.

Dishonesty can be a relapse trigger for many. Several different recovery programs require complete and total honesty in order to help a person who suffers from addiction. It can be very easy to slip back into old habits, so it’s important to support your loved ones to be negative thoughts forthcoming about negative thoughts, struggles, and other triggers that may set you back in defining sobriety in your life.

AspenRidge Recovery offers support for individuals and families that are facing the consequences of addiction. To find help immediately, contact us at 855-281-5588.

Addiction Thrives In Secret

Addiction & Secrets

One of the basic concepts of a life in recovery is honesty and openness with others, because truth creates an atmosphere where addiction cannot continue to flourish.

Addiction is a disease that thrives on denial, deflection, deception, and dishonesty. Keeping secrets and substance abuse support each other. Having a secret can open the door for addiction to come back into your life.

Think about the secrets that you tried to conceal during active addiction:

  • How often you used to drink and do drugs
  • How much you consumed
  • The amount of money you spent on your addiction
  • Your whereabouts
  • The people you were associating with
  • The time you spent acquiring drugs and alcohol
  • Your behaviors when you were under the influence

Each of these secrets allowed your addiction to worsen.

The secrets of addiction can keep a person trapped in the cycle. They can even start to deceive themselves into thinking that what’s happening isn’t so bad. Or sometimes the lies have become second nature to the person who suffers from addiction, to the point where they start to keep secrets almost without any regard.

A person who suffers from addiction will often lie and keep secrets in order to fulfill their own desires, regardless of how it will affect themselves or their loved ones. Uncovering hidden addictions is difficult, but often necessary to help loved ones seek treatment sooner.

Substances Abuse Operates In Secret

In order for an addiction to thrive, it needs to operate in secret. A person suffering from addiction has loved ones that may be ignorant to their drug use. Of course, if they knew what was happening, they would want to intervene.

Addiction is a progressive disease, meaning that it doesn’t just occur overnight. No one ever assumes or wishes to become addicted or dependent on a drug, but it can happen. As the disease progresses, more secrets to hide substance abuse are established. Similarly, as the person begins to struggle with increased stresses of home, work, marriages, they are less likely to raise awareness of their developing issues with alcohol or drugs. However, if you begin to notice signs or symptoms of abuse, it’s best to understand how to help. There are resources such as www.drugfree.org and others that can help bring light to a sensitive issue.

Addiction not only carries the potential to ruin relationships, but it can cause other issues such:

  • Financial problems
  • Employment issues
  • Health problems

Addiction can also harm the ones around you as it becomes important for secrets to go undiscovered. This is why honesty in recovery plays such an important role in long-term sobriety.

Relapse Triggers & Honesty

So we now know that addiction thrives on dishonesty. So it will be important to ensure that as a stage of recovery, your loved one is honest with themselves and with those around them in order to prevent a relapse. It can be tempting to tell a little white lie to save your loved ones from feeling hurt, however, it will always be important to be honest at all times.

In order to prevent a relapse, the person who suffers from addiction will need to be wholly honest at all times. Honesty can help with recovery, and it can also help to get past those relapse triggers. If you aren’t honest with yourself about what triggered the need for substance misuse, it will be difficult to prevent the same thing from happening again.

It will be important to be honest with yourself and those around you about what these triggers are. So if you have a loved one who suffers from addiction and is going through the stages of recovery, it will be important to encourage honesty at all times.

Some relapse triggers can include the friendships an addict had at the time of their addiction, suffering from very extreme states of emotion, or suffering from trauma. It will be important for a person suffering from addiction to be honest about what triggers their need to use, so that the recovery process can tackle these underlying issues.

Being Honest In Recovery

Being Honest While Seeking Treatment

In order to truly recover from an addiction, the person who suffers from addiction needs to understand how important it is to be honest. Sobriety is only part of the goal; recovery is of course a lengthy process, rather than an end destination. Honesty is simply one of the tools that an addict needs to use in order to recover from their addiction.

If someone isn’t honest in their recovery, it will be very hard to help them. If they aren’t honest with doctors or therapists, it will be very difficult for the professionals to help them. Even though it can be incredibly difficult to admit when they have been dishonest, it will be crucial to break away from the habit of dishonesty so that the person who suffers from addiction can recover properly.

Being honest in recovery will mean learning how to leave the habit of deceit in the past. You will find that honesty is just like flexing a muscle. It will take some hard work and practice in order for this to become second nature. You may find that it helps to keep a journal so that you are able to keep a better track of your individual behavior.

It will be important to value honesty as part of recovery.

Honesty In Recovery

It may seem like a daunting thing to tackle, but you’ll be surprised by how honesty will be able to help in the long run when it comes to recovery. This is because if you encourage your loved one to be honest with themselves and with you about how their addiction affected those around them, they can work towards avoiding falling back into old habits.

Being honest is also a fantastic way to avoid feelings of guilt and shame that can often come with lying and being dishonest. Being honest throughout the recovery process will help to heal the individual and their loved ones, and can help to repair the relationships that the disease of addiction ruined in the first place.

Honesty in the long term can also help the person who suffers from an addiction to address the underlying issues which may have caused the substance misuse in the first place, and prevent it from happening again.

Honesty In Recovery

Being Honest In Recovery Treatment With AspenRidge

So there you have it! You now know that honesty is critical in the recovery process. If a person who suffers from addiction can’t be wholly honest during the recovery process, they are more likely to relapse and continue the cycle. In order to break out of old habits, it will be important to not forgive any kind of dishonesty.

If you are concerned about a loved one’s alcohol or drug dependence, it’s important to remember that you aren’t alone. Here at AspenRidge we have a range of recovery programs to suit your individual needs and help you get back on the road to recovery. Give AspenRidge a call on 855-281-5588 to find a program that works for you.