What Are the Signs that Recovery Is Working?

According to doctors, therapists, addiction counselors, and former addicts, the following are some signs that recovery is working:

• Experts say that you can sense a person’s genuine recovery in under a minute. It hits you like a warm breeze. You just want to go hug them with a big smile. You WANT to talk with them and be around them. A person not in recovery will be controversial, contentious and stressful to be around, making you nervous and uncomfortable.

• Recovery is silent. You will hear a lot less talk and see a lot more walk.

• One of the classic signs that recovery is working is that a person in recovery has surrendered to the disease. He/she won’t be resisting or fighting any part of it.

• A person in recovery will be changing their friends. Before recovery an addict has a small exclusive group of friends and family around him/her who enables them and contributes toward their disease. A person in a smart recovery program will swap these friends and replace them with others who will support recovery efforts by emulating and encouraging all new required behaviors.

• Possible change of environment.

• They will be going to AA and Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

• They will have an AA sponsor and will be in regular contact. If you are close to the addict you will likely see and meet the sponsor.

• Rather than attempting to control everything in their life, a person in recovery will focus only on his/her treatment for addiction.

• You will not see a PR effort. Personal PR is what addicts do.

• You will not see spin control.

• A person in recovery is genuinely grateful to those who helped them get into recovery. They will shun those who enabled them, but will embrace those who directly confronted the disease.

• They will be humble and won't stumble.

• They will stay away from previous hotspots, bars, drug dens, pharmacies, etc. that were associated with pre-recovery behaviors.