Why getting better can be the hardest part #recovery #sobriety

Why do addicts relapse when their life is finally getting better? I know it's so tragic and it's so baffling for loved ones when they're watching and it seems so absurd. Why in the world would you do it? Everything was going well. You rebuilt your life. You regained people's trust. Everything was good. Why did you pull everything down at this moment? And so one answer people will give is that it's from low self-esteem, self-sabotage. I don't feel like I deserve a good life, so I ruin things when things are getting better. That's an interpretation, but I'll give you a deeper explanation which rings more true with me. And that is that the essence of recovery is humility. See, active addiction is about I'm going to manage my own life according to my own self-will. And some people can get away with that, but for addicts, that's fatal. That just blows up in their face. And what happens is the addiction brings you to your knees and you have to surrender and you have to say, "I can't be the boss anymore. I have to defer to a higher power." And then sanity returns and life starts to go much more smoothly. And you start to have success and you start to rebuild trust and people start to like you again. And then what happens is you are lulled into a false sense of security. "Oh, I can manage my own life. I wasn't that bad. I am able to do whatever I want and I can even indulge myself here and there and I can handle it." So what happens is life gets good and when life gets good, you forget the pain and the humiliation of the past and you become overly secure, which is why so many people with long-term sobriety, I'm talking about people with decades of sobriety, still go to meetings. Not necessarily because they need the support at the meetings, but because meetings are the place where you see newcomers. When you're going to see that man or that woman who's coming in during their first 24 hours, who just hit rock bottom and has nowhere else to go. And when you see those people who are fresh, who are brand new, who are coming from the worst day of their life, when you see that, that's a humbling reminder there but for the grace of God go I. That is how we keep our ego in check.