Why Is Honesty in Recovery Important?

The first step in fixing any issue in life is to recognize that you have an issue. The only way to do that is, to be honest with yourself. Honesty is particularly key when it comes to overcoming a substance addiction in addiction treatment. Although many people don’t initially realize it, honesty is also very important in addiction recovery. Honesty in recovery is important because, without it, people won’t be able to maintain sobriety. 

What Is Honesty in Recovery?

Honesty in recovery is exactly what it sounds like. It’s being truthful with oneself and others about where you are in your addiction recovery journey. Thus, to achieve honesty in recovery, you must be honest about the progress that you’ve made in your addiction recovery. You must also be honest about the lack of progress that you’ve made in your addiction recovery.

Why Is Honest in Recovery Important?

Without honest in recovery, there’s no true recovery. This is because honesty in recovery is the first step to not only achieving recovery but progressing overall as well.  

It Prevents Relapse

Without being honest about your achievements and your setbacks, you won’t make an accurate assessment of your condition and do what’s necessary to maintain sobriety. Thus, relapse is inevitable.

It Helps You Make Progress in Your Addiction Recovery Journey

If you’ve been able to utilize healthy coping mechanisms more consistently when faced with your addiction triggers lately, you should be honest with yourself about that accomplishment. On the flip side, if you’ve found that your mental health has been deteriorating as of late, that’s something that you should be honest with yourself about as well. Being honest about these matters will help you make accurate decisions on what the next steps should be in your addiction recovery journey. 

It Helps Build New Relationships

While it’s most important, to be honest with yourself while in recovery, it’s also important, to be honest with your therapists, support groups, and loved ones about where you are in your addiction recovery. Otherwise, they won’t be able to help you progress. 

Being honest in recovery with others will also make it easier to build true bonding relationships. This is because there needs to be honesty and authenticity between two people to build a bond that’s real. By building real bonds with others, you’ll be able to grow your support group.

It Helps Repair Broken Relationships

Honesty in recovery can even help you repair the relationships that you broke while misusing substances. Individuals that suffer from addiction often lie, cheat, and steal from the people closest to them. This causes a rift between the people that were closest to a drug addict and the drug addict himself. Through honesty in recovery, though, former substance users can rebuild trust with loved ones with whom they lost trust while misusing drugs. 

Reasons Why People Aren’t Honest in Recovery

There are many reasons why you should be honest in recovery. Still, many people choose not to be. Some common reasons why people in addiction recovery are still not honest with themselves or others include the following:

Fear of Failure and Consequences

Many people choose to not be honest in recovery with themselves because they fear that if they do, they’ll discover that they aren’t doing as well as they thought. People also often choose to not be honest in recovery with others because they fear the consequences that will arise if their therapists, support group members, and loved ones find out that they aren’t doing as well as they should in addiction recovery. 

Thus, by not being transparent about their addiction recovery journeys, some people feel that they can avoid failure and consequences. However, avoiding failure and consequences can only last so long before a person relapses. 

Protection

A lack of honesty in recovery can also make people feel as if they’re protecting themselves. Those in recovery may feel that they’re protecting themselves from negativity and the opinions of others. 

Unfortunately, though, dishonesty while in recovery only deters others from telling you the truth. If others withhold the truth it could backfire on you and cause you to relapse. 

You’ve Developed the Habit of Lying

Some people lie so frequently to themselves and others about where they are in their addiction recovery journeys that they’ve dug themselves into a hole that they can’t get out of. Essentially, such people have created for themselves a web of lies about their addiction recovery journeys. A web of lies that’s so intertwined that it’s just easier to continue to lie. 

It’s Produces Desirable Outcomes 

One common reason why people struggle to be honest in recovery is that past lies about their addiction recovery journeys have led to desirable outcomes. Thus, such people received positive reinforcement for being dishonest about their recovery. 

Such people must remember though that no matter how many times things have worked out in small ways when lying about their addiction recovery journeys, ultimately, things won’t work out. This is because relapse is the end result of continuously lying about one’s addiction recovery journey. 

They View the Lies As Being Small

Many people start not being honest in recovery by telling white lies. As harmless as white lies about your addiction recovery may seem, they’ll eventually add up. Once they do, they’ll cause you to tell a big lie that leads to you relapsing. Thus, it’s necessary to always be honest in recovery.

Achieve Addiction Recovery By Receiving Treatment At Little Creek

Little Creek Recovery is a drug and alcohol treatment center in Pennsylvania that specializes in treating men with substance addictions. Thus, we here at Little Creek Recovery only provide inpatient addiction treatment programs for men. Women that want to receive addiction treatment at our rehab center must do so through one of our outpatient treatment programs. 

Here at Little Creek Recovery, we push all of our patients to be honest in recovery after they complete addiction treatment at our rehab facility. Patients that aren’t ready to be honest in recovery can stay at our sober living home, Shanes’ House, until they develop the skills that they need to maintain sobriety in recovery and be honest about it. 

Here at Little Creek, we integrate internalized recovery through therapeutic and 12 step models. When doing so, we focus on the spiritual paradigm. Thus, we treat the minds, bodies, and souls of our patients so that they are prepared for addiction recovery and all of its challenges. 

To learn more about Little Creek Recovery and how we help our patients achieve addiction recovery, contact us today! We are more than willing to answer any questions that you may have.