The Focus One Approach: How to Recover

Recovery is Possible!

Most individuals who stop using drugs and alcohol do not learn how to make some very basic life changes that are essential to long-term recovery. They do not learn how to feel good about themselves and how to have fun without drugs and alcohol. Of course. this is not all there is to effective treatment, but, if these two very important changes do not occur early on in recovery, relapse is almost always inevitable.

Recovery is more than just abstinence from alcohol or drugs. There is a big difference between abstinence and recovery. Recovery is defined as a quality of life that is so satisfying that the “recovered” individual actually transcends the thought or notion of using drugs or alcohol to feel better. They don’t have to depend upon a substance like drugs and alcohol, or another person, or a particular behavior, to relieve anxiety and stress, or to cope with life events. They have learned how to feel better without using drugs or alcohol or anything else to feel better.

Individuals who recover have learned that life events don't have to quit happening in order to feel better. They know that they don't need to resolve every life issue once and for all in order to feel good. They have learned that it is their thoughts about life events that determines how they feel.

Recovered individuals have learned how to change their thinking

in order to feel good.

They have learned that they are responsible for making themselves feel better -- they do not make something or someone outside of themselves responsible for the way they feel. They have learned that nothing and no one outside of themselves is to blame for the way they feel. In other words, they have learned that they are responsible for the way they feel and that they can control the way they feel.

Recovered individuals have learned that they have the power to change themselves.

Recovery is SIMPLE!

The answer to a complicated life does not have to be just as complicated.

But beware -- SIMPLE doesn’t mean easy, it means UNCOMPLICATED.