One of the most challenging parts of recovery is being accountable. While we are in a treatment facility or sober living home or similar situation, others can help us stay accountable, complete with drug testing. We can also have counselors, sponsors, or others who we may be accountable to with regular meetings or visits. However, during a pandemic, we face a particular challenge, especially surrounding accountability. When we are at home alone around the clock, we have to be accountable to ourselves in recovery.
Accountability Within Treatment
While we are in residential treatment, accountability is enforceable. A simple drug test will let the staff know if we are being honest and authentic in our recovery. This is not meant to be punitive or a sign of a lack of trust, but rather a way to demonstrate to both others and especially ourselves that we can be trusted. Having lived in active addiction, accountability is more than likely something foreign to our recent way of thinking.
We are protected within treatment by having caring people around us who want us to succeed and have far more limited access to substances in residential care. This is ideal as we are new to sobriety and possibly also to honesty, a baby step toward the integrity we wish to achieve in our lives. Learning to be 100% accountable is bolstered by having such a powerful support system in place to help us succeed.
Accountability to a Sponsor
Looking forward to life after residential treatment, many people will have a sponsor. A sponsor is a mentor, someone who has already gone through the 12 Steps, and is willing to take you through them. A sponsor is someone who has learned what it means to be accountable and is accountable in their own recovery. A sponsor is someone who is there to guide us, to help us whenever we need support, and also someone that we can be accountable to.
After treatment, it can be helpful and almost comforting to have someone else to be accountable to for our recovery. Ideally, our sponsor is close to us and is as invested in our sobriety and accountability as we are. We can also be accountable as we attend support meetings and groups after treatment, but the one-on-one accountability to a sponsor is perhaps more powerful in recovery.
Accountability to Family Members
Many of us have family members that we return to live with or extended family who care about us deeply and want us to succeed in our recovery. While some family members may reach out to us to support us in the integrity of our recovery, we can also lean in to those family members and ask for support in keeping us honest and accountable.
Even more than a sponsor, family members have a vested interest in our recovery. They love us deeply, and they know us well. Being accountable to family means something deeper than just checking off a list or reporting a success because our sobriety directly impacts them. The deep love and relationships we have within family units can be either greatly blessed or further damaged by our level of integrity surrounding our sobriety.
Accountability to Self
It may seem counterintuitive that our accountability to ourselves can take longer to develop. However, with the damage that addiction does to our self-esteem and self-love, it is not actually that surprising. Looking in the mirror can be painful in addiction and in recovery, but ideally becomes more comfortable as we heal and grow into our new levels of self love.
Why We Should Be Accountable To Ourselves
Ultimately, we are accountable first and foremost to ourselves. However, this year, with stay-at-home orders in effect for so many months, we may have been thrown into self-accountability before we felt like we were ready. Being at home, particularly for those of us who live alone, and with so much less social interaction, we are the ones ultimately responsible for the integrity of our recovery. We answer first and last to ourselves, as well as around the clock, because we may not have anyone else to answer to.
However, a pandemic should not prevent us from achieving the level of accountability to ourselves that we want to achieve anyway. Yes, it makes it harder. Yes, it makes it easier to relapse without anyone else knowing. But at the end of the day, we know. We do have to answer to ourselves fundamentally and unconditionally. The staff at the treatment center, our sponsor, well-meaning family and friends, none of these people matter to our integrity as much as we do. That is why we need to be accountable to ourselves, even in a pandemic.
One of the first things we learn about in recovery is accountability. In the beginning, we have more extensive types of support while we are in residential treatment. As we progress and return to our lives again, we become accountable to our support system, consisting of our sponsor and other people in recovery, as well as our family, extended family, and friends. But in the end, we are the most important person to be accountable to. At Rancho Milagro Recovery, we are aware that personal accountability has had to be stepped up this year due to the pandemic. That is why we can prepare you to stand on your own feet and grow in your own integrity. Find out more about how you can learn accountability by calling us at (951) 526-4582. Even during a global pandemic, you have what it takes to stay accountable to the person who matters most in your recovery: you.