Experience Strength and Hope: Meaning & Benefits For Recovery

When you share your experience or a personal story of strength and hope in a 12 step meeting, you greatly help others in their recovery journey, new people who are facing turmoil, and also you help yourself. Experience strength and hope is a motto set by 12 step groups and often guide discussions in daily/nightly meetings. Your story of strength and hope can give strength to those who need it the most.  The most rewarding part about being in these support groups is when someone comes up to you after you share and they tell you how thankful they are to hear your story. It not only helps them, but can help you as well, by knowing that your voice and story is helping others stay off of drugs or alcohol.

Strength

Although it might not appear so at the moment, going for treatment for your addiction is an act of strength. It takes heart and bravery to look at your demon in the eye, confront your past boldly, and then choose to take control of your life once again by seeking change. The strength to stay sober during difficult or confusing times can be a guiding light for others to follow. Many in recovery go to meetings with the hopes to hear something that will help them stay sober. When you get personal and share your story of strength, it may help someone stay sober, even for just one more day.

Hope

Alcoholics and those addicted to drugs reach a point where they have absolutely no control. Instead, the drug takes over their entire existence. Sometimes, when people get sober things may not be as happy as they planned. Sharing your story of hope in a meeting and how your hope lead you out of the darkness of addiction can be just what a person needs to hear to remain hopeful of a happier future.

Hope can be defined as:

• A feeling of trust
• A feeling of desire and expectation for something to happen
• Believing that some good is bound to happen
• A thing or person that can help save someone

Hope keeps you going in tough and dark times. Hope gives you the kind of strength you need to forge forward even when you feel stuck. Hope gives you the assurance that even if you have no control over everything that will happen in the future, things will somehow get better. When you share how hope has kept you sober it may inspire someone else to remain hopeful as well.

Experience

Some need to know that others are going through the same things that others are. Experience strength and hope all help do this, but nothing does it more than sharing your personal experience. Talk about a time where you never thought you would find sobriety, how it made you feel and what you did to get sober. Talk about a time where you were sober and really wanted to use. What made you feel this why? How did you respond? Sharing your experience doesn’t mean only the moments you’ve experienced, but also the feelings and thoughts you have had as well. This makes addiction and recovery very relate-able and helps others know they are not alone with their thoughts and feelings.

Recovery

In the addiction world, a term often used is recovery. It is where all addicts receiving treatment want to end up. It means overcoming your addiction and living a healthy and normal life once more. A lot of people share different experiences and what gives them strength and hope in their addiction recovery journey. This has a huge impact on newcomers, those already in recovery and to the person sharing their own experience. Below is the importance of experiencing strength and hope in recovery.

Addiction can be described as a disease of isolation and loneliness. The thinking of an addict can be self-sabotaging, telling the addict that they do not have a disease, that they do not need meetings any longer because they’ve got money, family, friends, or success.  As an addict, once you are isolated, there is a higher likelihood that your thinking will convince you that you are well, and you can have a little bit more of the drug or worse still, have another drug other than the one you’ve been abusing.

One thing that attending support meetings and sharing experiences in the group will do is offset the self-destructive and delusional thinking.

A Sense of Being Connected

There is a theory that drug abuse is mainly caused by not being able to find connections or losing the feeling of being connected. Researchers are still gathering evidence to support it. Connections of weight and depth are made possible through sharing in support meetings. The recovery group gives you a chance to know others and to be truly known by them. This is important in creating a sense of connection and in your sobriety journey.

Preventing a Relapse

People who have relapsed and then gone back to meetings have admitted that before they relapsed, they had stopped going to group meetings. Support groups become pillars of strength and hope that create a sense of purpose and belonging. You may be able to convince others that you are okay, but your support group members know you better. It is in the shared meetings where you will be told of deeper underlying issues that you might not be aware of yourself or of feelings that you are trying to hide.

It is only in the support groups that you will be able to share and hear experiences. You will learn that you are not alone in the struggle.

Support

One good turn deserves another. Remember a time when you felt hopeless, lost, angry, lonely, frightened, desperate, and didn’t have the strength to go on? Well, someone showed up for you. Didn’t they? You somehow found your way to a support group and attended your first session. Afterward, you felt a little bit stronger, a little bit hopeful even. Had it not been for that support meeting and the welcoming arms of the members, you wouldn’t be where you are today.

Now picture a totally different situation, where there was no support group or no members. How would it have been like to be all alone in your fight? You would have completely lost it.

Someone out there needs the same support and love extended to them. It’s your turn to repay the debt. To show someone else that they are not alone in the difficult and seemingly impossible journey to recovery. It’s an opportunity for you to give them hope and strength to go on.

You get a real opportunity to recover from your addiction and avoid a relapse when you experience strength and hope. In these support groups, the pain is divided and the joy multiplied.