Addiction: Goals for the first year of recovery.

A list of important goals for the first year of your recovery. Use it as a reminder and to help you stay on track in the days and months ahead.

  • Accept that you have an addiction
  • Practice honesty in your life
  • Learn to avoid high-risk situations
  • Ask for help
  • Practice calling friends before you have cravings
  • Become actively involved in self-help recovery groups
  • Go to discussion meetings and begin to share
  • Get a sponsor and do step work
  • Get rid of using friends
  • Make time for you and your recovery
  • Celebrate your small victories. Recovery is about progress not perfection.
  • Practice saying no
  • Take better care of yourself
  • Develop healthy eating and sleeping habits
  • Learn to relax and let go of stress
  • Discover how to have fun clean and sober
  • Make new recovery friends and bring them into your life.
  • “Play the tape forward” to deal with cravings
  • Find ways to distract yourself when you have cravings
  • Deal with post-acute withdrawal symptoms
  • Develop a strategy for social settings where drinking is involved
  • Thank the supportive people in your life.
  • Develop tolerance and compassion for yourself and others
  • Say goodbye to your addiction
  • See yourself as a non-user