I'm a recovered alcoholic drug addict, and have been so for more then 30 years. My alcoholism is in remission and so no longer plays an active role in my daily life. Sobriety has rightfully taken its place in my life. I was in recovery process for those early times of ambivalence after last quitting and just before successfully living free of my alcoholism. Being now forever free though of those addiction chains means sobriety is simply a foundational essential experience of my daily life journey. There is always more to life than what sobriety itself offers for me. I didn't quit my enslavement to alcoholic drinking to become yet enslaved to the other side of the addiction coin: recovery and constantly remaining in a not-drinking process where everything is filtered through that recovery lense. Quitting drinking was an event for me. Recovery from my alcoholism addiction was a process. Being recovered from same is the successful end result of that recovery process. I am recovered from the illness of my alcoholism.
My life is a journey of continuous days, and so obviously a drunken journey when I drank. Now a sober journey, but nonetheless a journey either way. The sober life I have now has long ago surpassed my drunken life. There is nothing from my drunken life to recover from anymore. This is not to say I don't live with life-long consequences from my past alcoholism. Having said that, these consequences have no recovery potential. They are now and always will remain various facets what now makes me the me I am as a recovered alcoholic drug addict. Ongoing acceptance of my human and personal limitations is an essential practice for my life long enjoyment of being recovered.
For those who choose to see sobriety as the working definition their life, and not as simply a part of their life, then those persons being in perpetual recovery would make better sense then being recovered, as recovered means an end to whatever, while recovery suggests a timelessness without end.
Either way, its really a matter of personal choice how we journey our lives, and I don't believe one choice is less than the other. They both offer successful relief from addiction in unique ways.