My experience with recovery:
I haven't been sober more than a few months at a time since I was 12. I'm told that there's a ton of emotional development that is supposed to occur in people during puberty and well into their 20s. With me being drunk or high pretty much that entire time, I missed out on a lot of that development. One could say I was emotionally ******** (for lack of a better term).
So I removed alcohol and drugs from the equasion. But that didn't magically repair all the lost emotional development. So now I have to work really hard to catch up. My program of recovery (AA, 12 steps, etc.) includes never-ending work toward self-improvement.