My recovery from the illness of alcoholism is like night and day vs drinking with active alcoholism so for me losing sight of my whys for recovery is simply impossible if i maintain my spiritual fitness. I remember when I first started I gave my all into recovery and the payback is my now living a recovered life.
Do I work as hard at recovery today? No, and only because the work I do today is so much more efficient and powerful than my early times so less is more now!
Was my recovery ever a security blanket? Yes! and I'm still happy I used my recovery experiences as a sheltering, healing times and places in different aspects and events of my sober life. I was very damaged, very ill and sick, lost and confused, angry and in despair: I was a mess. Having the security of learning to live a life of recovery was very helpful for me to eventually become recovered.
I have found that any excuses I invent for not facing my real life are generated not from my experiences of recovery but from my fears of past failures and from my slowness to be rigorously honest with all of what makes me me and the life I now live. I do like to keep things simple and yet my life still manages to get complicated, lol. It's not always easy to keep up to myself, if you get my meaning <G>
I do know some recovering alcoholics get lost in their alcoholism without drinking and for them it could certainly seem like they are living for recovery and not recovering for living a good life. For me that speaks to their illness of alcoholism and not to their recovery. Alcoholism is a cunning, powerful fatal illness. It is with great sadness and sorrow that I have come to realize now these many years of experiences working with others that not all alcoholics stay sober and get on with a recovered life. Many alcoholics just stop awhile in between drinks. Many alcoholics die not having really (ever been) recovered. It's a horrible realization but the truth is out there big as life for all to see for themselves.
Having said all that, so I don't myself see how anyone could put too much into their recovery. For me, the more I give (gave) the more I get (got) back. What's there not to like about that?
Rob