Six Essentials to Achieve Lasting Recovery

Discover the six guiding principles that are key to lasting recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs. Learn why they’re important, how they relate to the Twelve Steps, and why they work.

Anyone who has recovered from addiction to drugs or alcohol knows that getting sober is only the beginning. Working the Steps, patching life back together, and living sober are where the real work lies. While the Twelve Steps provide a program of lifelong recovery, recovery experts Sterling Shumway and Thomas Kimball have identified six essential values, or principles, that reinforce the Steps and that are key to achieving lasting recovery:

Hope: A reawakening after despair; to live with greater confidence

Healthy Coping Skills: Managing the pain and stress of life

Sense of Achievement and Accomplishment: Moving beyond the limits of addiction toward personal goals

Capacity for Meaningful Relationships: The positive support and connection with family and peers

Unique Identity Development: The emergence of a unique positive identity

Reclamation of Agency: The internal knowledge that you have choices in your behavior

Using their research, personal stories, and guided journals and exercises, Shumway and Kimball thoroughly unlock these complex principles for recovering addicts and their families, and provide practical steps for applying them to a long-term recovery program.