Do you consider yourself one of the winners? I received this question via email from someone that is just entering into addiction recovery. This person is seeking the experience from others as an aid to their own recovery.

Going by the name of my site, What Winners Do, one might get the impression that I am someone with answers...I'm not. I don't think there are too many answers in addiction recovery, mainly there are questions.

In addiction recovery there are certain things that would define What Winners Do:

• Keep sobriety their top priority
  
• Constantly work on their recovery
  
• Stay honest with themselves
  

The reason why that list is not more specific is because there are no rules to addiction recovery. What is right for one person may be very wrong for another.

But as long as your recovery is centered around meeting the 3 criteria listed above...you are doing what the winners do.

In the beginning of my own recovery I felt like I had to put on a front for others. "Oh, everything is going great", "No, I don't have any cravings...I'm doing fine". But

I soon realized that I'm not in competition with anyone except my own addiction. I don't need to put on any facade for anyone.

I guess I was just really used to showing people what they wanted to see instead of what was really going on. I feel like as soon as I was able to recognize that in myself I was able to really start working on my recovery.

To me, my recovery is about way more than just my addictions. There is a whole addictive thought process and set of bad beliefs that I'm working towards changing completely.

Who knows if I will ever really be able to modify my bad behavior (see, no answers just more questions) but I can sense that I am already better for trying.

So to answer the original question of "Do you consider yourself one of the winners?", I would have to answer no. I'm just another person in recovery trying to do with the winners do.

TAKEN FROM "WHAT WINNERS DO"