Have you ever met someone who says they are still “in recovery” yet they haven’t had a drink or touched any drugs in 12 years? To me, that means they have recovered – that it’s done. Taking it “one day at a time” can be detrimental after that amount of time, because if you’re always holding on tightly for fear that you might take another drink then it’s hard to fully move out of the past and into the future.
Sometimes meetings can be great support groups for people, while often they’re filled with people who are going because they recently relapsed and are seeking some sort of an attempt to apologize for what they’ve done. It’s almost like confession – you can keep on committing sins as long as you confess them to the priest. With some long-time meeting goers it’s like they can relapse as often as they want as long as they keep coming to the meetings.
The truth is that recovery shouldnt have to be this way – a repeating pattern of relapses and more meetings – for years. A successful long term rehab program could help handle this permanently