Recovery Journal
 

I want to start a journal on my recovery as I've heard it can be very helpful, but I'm having a hard time getting started. Can anyone suggest some useful prompts related to recovery? Maybe ones you have used and found to be helpful, or maybe just issues and subjects that would be helpful to focus on. I'm just looking for some ideas.

How about start with your story what really led you to where you are today. No one will read it do be as honest as you can with yourself!

Great idea

List the reasons for wanting sobriety. Perhaps describing the moment and the though process when you came to that conclusion. What challenges you anticipate. What you hope to accomplish when you're sober. How people reacted ... and so forth. Great idea!

My own sobriety journaling experience didn't last long but I still think it's a valuable tool and one I can pick up again any time. So, here's some stuff I included in mine from last fall:

--on one page I just wrote in highlighter: "What are you doing DIFFERENT?" So how will you think/live differently to maintain your sobriety?

--In the same vein, on one day I made a little checklist of things I'd done that day to preserve my sobriety (texted a friend -- who also happens to be a substance-abuse counselor-- about getting a sponsor, attended an AA meeting, made a phone call to ask about a local "outpatient" sobriety program)

--wrote about an AA meeting I attended that day -- what was said, how I felt about it

--taped in a photocopied chapter from Augusten Burroughs's book, This is How, on quitting drinking and how your personal desire to quit is, to him, THE critical factor in making sobriety stick

--wrote about the most serious consequences of my drinking (loss of TWO professional, full-time permanent jobs)

--glued in cards expressing support for me (these were from members of my mother's Sunday School class -- yes, she told them!)

--wrote about having the desire to drink on a particular day, and feeling as though it didn't really matter if I did -- after all, I was BOUND to cave and start again at some point, right? So it might as well be now. Then I had a different thought -- that every night we choose not to drink can, by itself, make a big difference in our lives. That might be the night we DON'T get arrested, humiliate or kill ourselves or someone else because we chose not to drink THAT night (or day). That helped me to overcome my feelings of "what difference does it make if I don't drink TODAY? It DOES make a difference!

You can also tape or glue in articles and quotes, to inform you or inspire your sobriety -- heck, there's LOTS of great stuff here in the SR forums that's informative and inspiring that you could print out and include. You might also include observations on the positive difference sobriety is making in your life (and other people's positive comments or observations on changes they see in you), etc.

Good luck and thanks for the question, because typing this post is something active I've done to preserve my own sobriety (42 days today) today! :burnout:

Thanks! Great ideas! I don't usually use journals with phrases or quotes on the cover, but I found one that says "show me a day when the world wasn't new" (quote by Sister Barbara Hance), and it seems so appropriate. I think reading that will remind me to move on and put the guilt, shame, and fear in the past.