Embodying Recovery: A Roadmap for Thriving Across a Lifetime

Map created by Ruth Riddick, CARC, RCP/f, RTR-S Sobriety Together

Your client got sober! That’s great. What’s next? The goal is recovery. SAMHSA defines recovery as “a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential.” Turns out there are a lot of tasks and milestones one must achieve to get to live a self-directed life and strive to reach one’s full potential. The good news…. There’s a map for that!

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Do you ever feel frustrated with the fact that although we can save people from the edge of an overdose with a puff of Narcan, once they are on the not dead side of the equation, we leave them to their own devices to struggle on their own or use another day, hoping that the next time won’t be as dangerous? Do you wish you could offer your clients and or the people who people your world who struggle with substances something more than just sobriety? Do you wish you could shift the focus from surviving to thriving?

This is the goal that SAMHSA put forth over 15 years ago. “Recovery is a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential.” If you’ve worked in the substance abuse treatment field or watched a loved one struggle, this may seem like bit airy fairy, pie in the sky, wishful thinking, especially if you don’t know how to help people make the leap from not drinking or using to thriving. You may have become jaded after watching so many get clean, go back to their lives only to relapse. It may seem like sustained recovery requires bushwacking through dense and tangled emotional woods in the dark with no trail in sight.

What you may not know is recovery doesn’t have to take place in uncharted territory. There IS a map we can use with clients and loved ones to make the journey from surviving to thriving. Developed by Kathleen O’Connell and expanded by Phillip Valentine, RCP, the “Stages of Recovery” model provides a map for the recovery journey across a lifetime. This model was introduced in the Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery’s (CCAR) Recovery Coach Academy training for addiction recovery coaches.

By identifying the milestones and tasks for each stage of recovery, this model gives the individual, and the people who work with them, a glimpse into what a future in recovery might look like and a set of directions for how to move through the stages of Stabilization, Deepening, Connectedness, and Integration, to get to Fulfillment, the final destination.

However, unlike the maps we all have on our smart phones, the Stages of Recovery model is not a linear model. It reminds us that “recovery is a process, not an event.” And while you probably wouldn’t have to keep circling through Philadelphia to get to Washington DC, tasks such as anxiety management, breaking the pattern of isolation, learning to tolerate feelings, learning to avoid drama, and self-forgiveness may have to be repeated over and over again.

The challenge is we tend to base our predictions of the future on what has already happened, much of which has been the lather, rinse, repeat journey from sobriety to relapse to rehab. We need a way to envision a different future for our clients. The best way to do this is in action, to actually step into the future and feel into what recovery can be like. That is, the best way to learn this model is through psychodrama. Psychodrama is an experiential modality that allows participants to embody what it’s like to be in different stages of recovery. Rather than getting lost in the cognitive and intellectual processes, participants are able to step into a lived experience that engages them cognitively and emotionally.

Developed by JL Moreno, psychodrama, sociodrama and sociometry are particularly useful in cutting through rationalization, denial, justification and various other defenses that people use to avoid change. When you do things in action your body takes over and your mind gets out of the way.  By stepping into this new, uncharted future, participants will get a sense of what it is like to experiment with different choices and experience what if…. of living a self-directed life and striving to reach their full potential. Having an experience of what the different stages could be like, participants will be better equipped to guide their clients on this journey.

@Jennifer Salimbene, @Ruth Riddick and I will be bringing this training to life on the Original Moreno stage in Highland, New York, Sept. 6-7, 2025. Join us and experience these stages of recovery in action, tap into your spontaneity and creativity, glean insights and have some fun.